


Child of Storms

by Melinoel



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: Coping, Depression, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Reunions, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, trying and failing to move on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-03-30 05:42:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 94,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13944084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melinoel/pseuds/Melinoel
Summary: Like the typhoon on the night they first met. Like the blizzard that trapped them in the bunker during the New Year. Like the thunderstorm that pushed back his departure from late February to early March. Like the waterspout that drifted him 100 kilometers further south than his mainland destination. Like the deluge that trapped him in a cave for two weeks without food as punishment for breaking that foolish adolescent promise. Like the downpour on the night he took this frail creature in.The most memorable moments of his life happened during storms.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *sigh* 
> 
> The No.6 bug bit me. Hard. Really hard.
> 
> I have been a hysterical, inconsolable mess perpetually reliving the first four stages of grief since December 2017 when I got the dumb idea to watch the anime. Then, feeling woefully unsatisfied, I read the manga. Then the light novels. Then I devoured through hundreds of fanfics on AO3 alone. And I’ve never felt so fucking broken for so long without end in my life. Also, “Rokutousei no Yoru” is “My Heart Will Go On” on a steroid-crack hybrid cocktail with cyanide sprinkles, carbon monoxide whipped cream, and a cherry bomb on top.
> 
> No.6 didn't break me; it destroyed me. Since I've lost count how many times this damned story, especially the ending (and "Rokutousei no Yoru"), made me cry like a baby, I don't think I'll ever get over it. (•̩̩̩̩＿•̩̩̩̩)
> 
> I guess I should take the inevitable plunge into writing No.6 fanfiction to help me cope with the gaping void in my broken heart. As I enjoy all three versions to similar yet varying degrees, different elements from the anime, manga, and light novels will be combined here. 
> 
> As always, constructive feedback is welcome. I am my own beta tester, and, even as a native English speaker, I still make elementary mistakes. Edits will continue in the meanwhile. ^_^’

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

― Rabindranath Tagore, _Stray Birds_

* * *

Sometime between the insane idea to haze the understudies with a lassi drinking contest and the manager calling out the lead actors to give grandiose speeches to close out the season, the rat slipped between the ruckus and the lights of the theater. He’d collect his gold on Friday after the understaffed accountant counted every coin to the drop and before the arrogant divas, recovering from their cannabis-ridden high, robbed more than their fair share of revenue.

Downpour projected the building’s radiance in all directions, blinding citizens and stars alike in the red light district. The superfibre cloth, taking the shape and function of a poncho, shielded Nezumi from the sparks of a party on fire, but the rain tore through the fabric and drenched him to the bone. The old thing would have more life in quieter climates, but the inconstant temperature fluctuations and heavy rainfall of the monsoon season aged it at thrice the rate of the light acidic rains of the former Mediterranean Europe to the north or the geothermal deserts of the former India to the east. With the rainy season at its peak, Nezumi’s mice learned to readapt to indoor life for weeks on end. Even the mechanical ones could only resist water for four hours, and Nezumi had not yet found high quality salvage to provide longer-lasting protection from extended total exposure.

But it was not uncommon for the blue mouse to burry itself deep in Nezumi’s clothes, only to appear when he changed into costume. It was stubborn like its father Hamlet. Both had the insane affinity for very niche, specific things: tragedies for the father and adventures for the offspring. (After discovering a litter of pups encircling Cravat seven months out on the journey, Nezumi learned to not guess the sex of any live mouse he kept.) The family must have convinced it to stay home, as Nezumi felt a nagging solitude in not hissing curses at the blue pest tangled in the folds of his shirt and dangling for dear life by a twisted paw.

Solitude. An ache crinkled inside his ribcage as the cold storm raged louder than the single tall, vast cloud consuming the sky and dumping rain to drown the streets of and the plateaus surrounding No.1.

Nezumi had loneliness as a friend with benefits these past five years. It was a cold that nipped at winter’s heels. When it came and went with the seasons, he could bear the harsh mistress’ temper. Nezumi, always cunning and quick, avoided much of her tricks and illusions. But cunning and quick was she as well, beating the rat at his own game. His worst defeat was fourteen months ago, and the scars and memories he swore were light as wind were boulders dragging his feet into the earth.

May 19: if that day didn’t make a fool of him, losing Hamlet four days later did.

To escape the pit — sometimes a sea of burning bodies or groping shadows or quicksand — he amputated his feet. He would survive by crawling. Losing feet wouldn’t break him; humans lived long and well lives without them.

Neither would a brazen drunkard cursing him in Hausa with a shiv that lunged from the dark corner of the gateway marking the divide between the commercial district from the slums. After years of practice and too much exposure to an airhead idiot, Nezumi finally mastered the art of walking and piecing through the thoughts and feelings in his head without losing sight of his surroundings.

The lack of traction on the flooded road gave Nezumi more freedom to incapacitate the man twice his size. He twirled on his feet, brought his arm up to push away the hand with the blade, knelt low, and kicked his attacker’s kneecap, shattering his patella. The attacker collapsed and clutched his mangled limb, wailing barely audible over the grumbling rain. Nezumi looked at the soul long enough to realize he was what local denizens called “brittle boned”. Knowing the man was no longer a threat, Nezumi walked away with a conscious numbness to the plight of a malnourished stranger who called him a pale demon.

Once he reached the lone fig tree in the center of a half-crowded plaza from the pre-war days, he counted his tenth sneeze. Word claimed the clouds would pass by tomorrow evening, and Nezumi had just enough to hold out to buy food if he woke up with a cold. His hands pruned and his feet were swimming in two inches of water trapped in his boots.

Just two more blocks. The mice would huddle around the coldest parts of his body his blankets could not protect from the draft seeping through the worn, dilapidated structure of the mid-twentieth century relic of an apartment. Seven little bodies were better than none, but one would have been better if he hadn’t— 

He shook his head. A dull throbbing replaced the end of the thought. No.6 felt closer than his shitty apartment with paper thin walls and cracked windows at this rate. 

A faint sound tickled the drenched hair pressed to his neck.

His instincts tapped into something in the world that made him hear and anticipate things most were oblivious to. Several signs he recognized at a young age, but one emerged frequently not long after he left the toppled city.

 

_“I-I thought you were going to die. My fear of losing you is so unbearable. Nothing scares me more than losing you.”_

 

The tickle to the base of his neck happened suddenly, without warning, and in any other circumstance it would sour any mood for the rest of the day and linger in his inevitable nightmares.

But this sound, getting louder as Nezumi approached his block, did not pinch the nerves that only inflamed in response to the echos of singing or asters. He stood at the door to the complex and a clear sense what the sound is and where it’s coming from blossomed in his gut.

It was another shackle, but one an old acquaintance allowed themselves to be bound to.

In the alley between the apartment complex and thrift shop, in the rusted dumpster amidst an ocean of trash and bodily fluids was gargled crying and strained coughing.

Many impulses told Nezumi to walk away as he left the brittle man to bleed to death if someone else hadn’t shoved his face into a wall, crushing his malnourished skull like a rotten tomato. Others, first turned on suddenly so many moons ago, navigated him through the cesspool to investigate the dumpster, its stench to last three days longer than average due to sanitation refusing to risk their necks in the slums in the downpour.

“A baby!”

An excitable voice knocked the wind out of Nezumi. Pulling gloves from his pocket and his cloth over his nose, he avoided the rivers of trash and unknown fluids leaking from the bin and looked inside.

“Who’d do such a thing?! We have to help her!”

It was clear, completely unmuffled by the rain. More concrete and real than the dumpster before Nezumi. A cloud of white entered his field of vision, and the angel lifted the baby in his arms. His expectant smirk anticipated the rat’s mockery, and unbroken determination burned in his red-purple eyes.

“She’s so cute, isn’t she? Oh, look, Nezumi! She has brown eyes! They look like how mine used to be! Forgot mine are supposed to be brown, didn’t you? I'd say we could be related, but brown's still the most common eye color in humanity, so the chances of that being true are slim. Still, aren’t they pretty? They’re light enough to see her pupils! I think she's going to be very expressive when she grows up!”

_He_ held the baby as if it was second-nature, and, given _his_ innate affection for children and animals was always blatant, this should not have surprised Nezumi. The image inflicted burns to his eyes and aches to his chest regardless; just seeing _him_ and hearing _his_ voice were enough to reopen wounds that never had the chance to develop scars. 

Then as suddenly it appeared, the apparition dissolved into the rain. The crying that lured Nezumi stopped. 

His stomach turned to lead. Before he could process what happened seconds ago or his own reaction to the change of events, Nezumi reached into the dumpster and, elbow-deep in filth, he rescued the baby. Once he broke into the back entrance of the apartment complex, he dropped to the floor and lay the baby on its side on his superfibre cloth.

The baby, stark white and smaller than a watermelon, lie cold and still with its mouth full of the murky water and filth from its polluted crib. He had never touched a human baby before, but Nezumi knew from stories and books that physically they were just a smaller and more fragile adult. He patted its back gently near its lungs until the baby coughed and brought air back into its tiny, visible ribcage. Awakened again the baby shivered and screamed at the sea of discomfort and shit the world tossed it in.

Many things annoyed Nezumi, especially babies, for they are dumb, selfish parasites that never shut up. They couldn’t communicate in a way for anyone to understand, and their temperaments were maddeningly unpredictable. But this baby at this time spoke in a language universal to all life: it wanted to survive. All it had was its incessant, piercing cry to survive this round of the dance of death and have the reaper overlook its fleeting existence today. It was distressingly fluent for a creature unable to form a coherent thought.

Nezumi wrapped the baby in his cloth, exposing the creature to the cold dampness a moment longer until they arrived in its rescuer’s apartment. Once he unlocked his door on the sixth floor, a chorus of mice clamored up Nezumi’s leg to reach the bundle in his arms. 

“It’s just a baby! Shit, let me in before you make me drop it!”

As he placed the baby on his sad excuse for a couch to change into dry clothes, the living mice pulled the cloth off the baby and used their fur to dry it until the mechanical mice brought the last unused towel before laundry day. Elbow-length damp hair undone and pressed to his skin, Nezumi returned with a bowl of warm soapy water and a cloth. The apartment was chaos for several minutes as the baby continued to cry while the mice interrogated the mercurial man for the monumental and shocking surprise guest. 

Once Nezumi removed every trace of filth from the baby’s body, he used an old shirt as a diaper and fed her a crushed banana. Fatigue and fever ached his body, but he fed the baby until she finally stopped crying. 

The adrenaline was wearing off, and Nezumi knew he’d pass out within seconds after this on top of a long day closing out the biggest theater production he had ever participated in. His apartment barely had furniture besides the couch, a bed, a dresser, and a desk, covered in scripts and books. He had originally planned to leave the city in a few weeks after getting his last paycheck for the season. But as he lay in bed with the baby tucked in by his side, his plans may change. Besides, he had a question tug his stomach from a painful angle that he had to find an answer to: _Why did I drag a fucking baby into my life?_

He blamed the mirage. No matter where he went, no matter his mood, no matter the timing, _he_ would suddenly appear and give some kind of guidance of where to go or hint at what to do next. Maybe _he_ knew Nezumi removed the weight from his ankles and lured him into another trap, only allowing him freedom until _he_ found a way to have the shackles on an indisposable body part. After all, _he_ knew that baby was a girl with brown eyes before Nezumi brought her in and looked closer. He gasped when her eyes looked into his after having her full with the banana.

They were just like _his_ before the wasp drained his eyes and hair of color.

_This has to be some cosmic prank._

As he anticipated the veil of a long, painful sleep, Nezumi watched the baby babble to the blue, brown, grey, and black mice encircling her. The blue mouse made itself comfortable on her belly and tolerated her hands grasping for its twitchy tail. The brown mouse, the eldest at thirty months old, sniffled the thin red patch of hair on the crown of her head. It leaned against her scalp to touch the foreign hair that its little curious mind became enamored with. After making new friends, heavy curtains drew over the baby’s eyes, and she eased into sleep with the mice as blankets.

Nezumi flattened the tuff of hair the mouse disturbed when it curled into a comfortable position. He had only seen red hair twice before: both in the dwindling number of northern European descendants in No.3. Many recessive phenotypical traits have died out completely, and anyone with eyes or hair that were not some shade of brown or black were viewed as more valuable. Nezumi's grey eyes were no exception, though the four grey-eyed people he has met expressed similar fascination for the shade and color as those in and surrounding the generally ethnically homogenous No.6. The worth of such things may nearly always be superficial, but for anyone to abandon their own child — designed by nature to elicit unconditional love from her parents, in theory and in practice — disgusted Nezumi. The baby was better off never being born if her mother would throw her away so easily for someone else to take pity on the unwanted burden.

Usually he mocked charity and actions born of pity, but he saved her anyway. Somehow, despite abandoning the only person he ever loved — a conclusion he came to grudgingly while picking up the fragments of the mask he always wore that shattered like glass — his twisted, hypocritical, hardened heart somehow had more humanity than a woman who carried this creature in her womb for nine months and screamed in agony for hours to bring her into the world.

Nezumi’s pulse pounded his skull. He felt the first wave of fever wash over him, and knowing the night was far from over, he submitted to his body’s commands to heal. The worst may pass in the night, leaving him ready for what the morning brings.

Rest never came to him. He dreamt of Shion, his former home in Chronos, the open window, the medicine kit, his deft suturing, the mugs of cocoa, the purple sweater, the bed.

The memory of Shion’s forehead to Nezumi’s to check his temperature reminded him of neither bondage nor pain. Every second of that night would replay until they lay beside each other; the intelligence of Shion's sixteen-year-old self shined in those fleeting brown eyes Nezumi did not forget. They were only twelve, but every set of threaded fingers, every embrace, every caress lacked the hesitation and naivety of inexperienced children. Thoughts Nezumi had never admitted in those short, turbulent six months they spent living together were conveyed with the smallest touch or the gentlest sigh. The ease in Shion accepting and initiating affection tied his insides into tight knots that induced an addictive pleasure he had gone without for years.

Every incarnation of the beginning of their mundane ritual they continued to perform four years after Shion's twelfth birthday every night played out differently in all but one way: two halves awake in the morning enveloped in each other’s arms, incapable of coming undone until the dreamer awakes alone with his heart mourning its counterpart’s absence.

Although the baby’s crying woke him up because she needed food and a changed diaper, this morning was no different from any other. After caring for his new deadweight enough for her to stop wailing and go back to sleep, Nezumi sat on his moth-eaten couch and submitted to the aftermath of the dream. He pressed his forehead against his knees as he tasted the quiet tears he held back all morning and were hotter than the peak of his fading fever.

They kissed in this dream. It was full of hunger and desperation he barely restrained when they parted on that windy hill surrounded by barely budding cherry blossoms. No child seasoned by hardship and struggle could ever know how to perform such an act, but he had accepted the lack of realism after the fourth time this particular dream played in the midst of his repressed and suppressed thoughts.

It was pathetic how much he wanted every one of his longings to be real. He should have stolen Shion's first kiss when he had the chance. He should have held Shion until they melted into one being when he slept next to him. They should have claimed each other during their last night together. 

Oh, how they were so close to becoming too safe, too involved to ever allow each other to separate. No salve ever soothed the restless rage of the keloid spider on his back like Shion’s hands, immune to calluses after years of protection from toil within the walls of the city of No.6. One gentle brush lit untapped nerves in his back; one palm measuring the size of the rough insect rendered him immobile and breathless to sensations that outnumbered and overpowered the signals of pain. 

No one touched his scarred back like Shion before or after, and yet he knew with the same certainty one has of their true name that his body was designed for only Shion's touch to cast such magic. He had no control over the sounds Shion lured out of him— did he moan? how loud was he? did he sound like a woman? — and he didn’t care so long the dangerous, paralyzing pleasure never stopped. The memory of those caresses and other physical teases spread shivers to every nerve ending, and Nezumi cursed the hard pressure in his lap even more than the tears soaking his sweatpants.

_“Throw every one of your memories away”, huh? So much for practicing what I preach._

No matter who was by his side now, Nezumi hoped — one of a dozen emotions he let himself feel for the sake of his sanity — that Shion still smiled like he did in his dream, like when he watched him from afar. That would mean he could move on and let Nezumi go because his soul didn't break beyond reparation, if it ever broke at all.

 

_"People change, boy. That man you believe in will change too. Anyone who stands at the top of a state will change. If he doesn't change, he'll be destroyed.”_

 

That vile, hateful man lied; Shion neither changed nor was destroyed because of No.6. He witnessed it himself. The brilliance of his unfading smile will bring light to a significant other who won't go blind from indirect sight. Nezumi may have saved his life several times, but he could never give Shion what he really needs to live happily and well without want. It's best to leave the boy he loved in the past so he can live in a new present with someone who'll never bear the potential to destroy him like Nezumi.

 

_"I’m drawn to you.”_

 

But that was always the problem. Many were more worthy to see it, but the light, a blinding, rare miracle, felt like it shined for only one person; his smile was made only for Nezumi, and only Nezumi had the innate ability to see it for what it truly is. A smile that has been lost to time and distance and alternate futures in which he never left and admitted the truth that continues to scare him.

Shion saved him ten years ago because he’s Shion. Nezumi watched over him in secret for four years because he’s Shion. He saved Shion from the thrawls of the security bureau and the scientists in the Correctional Facility because he’s Shion. He took a bullet for him because he’s Shion. He dreams of Shion to this day in spite of every attempt to forget and ignore him because he’s Shion. Shion could still smile like the happiest kid in the world despite living off moldy bread and watery soup with the nameless, homeless rat who mocked his idealism and naivety because he’s Shion.

Shion is Shion; it’s just that simple.

 

_“Then what would you have me say? 'I love you'?”_

 

_Yes._ Nezumi choked on a sob at the subconscious thought, cutting through the conscious lies he fed himself.  _No matter what shitty thing I would’ve spat in your face after, you should have said it. Even though I’m gone and you have someone else, I still want you to say it._

Why that boy was ever a mystery to him no longer made sense to Nezumi. He never understood Shion because he never tried. He simply was himself, acting only as himself. There never was another reason but Shion acting and thinking based on how he understood the world from how he was raised. He didn't need to know everything about him; only the fundamentals of his character to discern his feelings and moods with enough accuracy to be reliable matter, and he failed to live to that standard.

Questioning his worldview as often as he did meant to invalidate his perspective, to belittle his existence, to look down on him, to not see him as his equal. Nezumi questioned Shion’s existence ever since the moment he heard the boy scream in the middle of a typhoon. There never was room to accept the breadth of the kindness bestowed upon him without hesitation or complaint.  

 

_“Please, don't go, Nezumi. This world means nothing to me without you.”_

 

He didn’t deserve those feelings he supposedly inspired in Shion, and because seeing them displayed before his feet hurt more than when flames boiled the skin on his back, he didn’t want those feelings.

It was Nezumi's turn to ruin the baby's sleep, but she was too young to understand or do anything about it.

* * *

Day three of living with the new roommate and Nezumi deeply regretted his irrational moment of altruism and would have drop-kicked her out the window so she'd fall back in the dumpster he found her in if he were a true sociopath. Alas, he wasn't to his relief in spite of his seething anger.

Her ribs were starkly visible, she screamed at every hour due to the fever she developed, and she threw up every scrap of whatever soft food Nezumi had left in his kitchen. He couldn’t reach a doctor or buy groceries as No.1's week-long downpour developed into a deluge overnight. The streets of the slums were two feet deep in water, and the ceaseless arguing and despairing of residents on the first floor made him grateful he lived two floors below the roof. Even then, the resident above him bitched every few hours about not having enough buckets to catch the rainwater leaking through, some of which began to trickle between the floorboards above and onto Nezumi’s appliances. In a fit of brief paranoia he even turned off the heater in case water dared to compromise the device, leaving him months without warmth instead of days.

Between keeping his apartment clean, calming a sickly parasite, and nibbling on the crumbs his mice had not yet found, Nezumi had no time alone to read, to think, to tinker, to relax. His spirit drained with each passing hour as the light at the end of the tunnel never came no matter how much he pressed onward. At least he had no time for Shion to creep into his thoughts.

By midnight, he couldn’t sleep no matter how much he tried to ignore the internal and external pains that assaulted him without end. The baby’s cries hit a critical point, and Nezumi had to scream in the hall of the apartment complex before trying to and failing to comfort the ungrateful and stubborn near-skeleton.

The hysterical cries of a sick baby, seven real and mechanical mice’s incessant squeaks, the cyclone outside shaking the paper-thin glass windows, and the humid and sticky indoors all overwhelmed Nezumi, and, no longer a child, he could not fight through the pandemonium with his blade or tongue. He could not outwit chaos with charms and words that only sway the hearts of man. It was far from the first time he felt unequipped for the realities of life, but the slings and arrows never cut so deep into the layers of skin protecting the raw, mangled, ugly remains of a rotting heart.

Knowing the theories of human behavior and interaction from all the books he read and collected, he had nothing to offer. His hands were too thin, pale, and hardened with calluses to offer a warm touch. His vocabulary was too broad and biting to offer understanding words.

 

_“Nezumi… sing a song… for me?"_

 

Songs can't save anyone. Music can’t save anyone. Nezumi can't save anyone. Nothing can save another life but the very life itself that is in danger.

But with nothing left to gain or lose before the last thread of his sanity snapped, Nezumi held his breath, relaxed his hold of the baby, and began to hum. Once he found a pitch the baby responded the most receptively to (beyond her screams weakening into nagging whimpers, he couldn’t tell if her moods were fake or genuine anymore), he closed his eyes and let the words flow, seeking crevices in and between immovable stone to fill the empty spaces hidden in plain sight.

_O twilit sun, o dawning moon_  
_Spirit away lost dew-kissed wisps_  
_In light_  
_In dark_  
_In shade_  
_From this life to the next_

Caught by the spell of Nezumi’s voice, the mice and the baby quieted their cries a notch. The rodents gathered in a circle at the foot of his bed and tentatively observed their composing master carry the song to soothe the natural and artificial of the microcosm in the apartment.

_The unbroken, the pure mother_  
_Bring solace from the lifeblood to_  
_The friend_  
_The fiend_  
_The rest_  
_For this life and the next_

A branch torn from the fig tree could fly through the window, ushering in the madness outside to undo the growing calm inside, but Nezumi continued to sing and rock the frail little red monster in his arms.

_Soul-twin long lost, so briefly found_  
_Stay close to me, never let go_  
_In wake_  
_In sleep_  
_In dreams_  
_In this life and the next_

Sweat glistened against her skin and memories of pain contorted her face, but her crying ceased. When Nezumi finished, a heaviness released him of his hunched posture and of a sigh too large to escape his throat in one breath. The scars on his back and in his heart continued to ache, yet he would continue to bear them, as the baby could now better bear her illness.

He needed saving as much as she.

“Someone taught me it long ago,” he said when her brown eyes, now clear and aware, met his grey. “‘One day you will know the true power of song. Use it well as you survive and endure,’ she said.”

“B-Bah!”

She reached for him with both hands, only managing to grab two fists full of his hair. Her tugs didn’t cause pain, but her jovial fixation erased whatever memory of the shroud of illness that terrorized Nezumi out of his light and troubled sleep.

_Their moods change so suddenly and without warning…_ He clicked his tongue. “At least fifteen more years of coddling needy baggage with the unpredictable temperament of a storm—”

Like the typhoon on the night they first met. Like the blizzard that trapped them in the bunker during the New Year. Like the thunderstorm that pushed back his departure from late February to early March. Like the waterspout that drifted him 100 kilometers further south than his mainland destination. Like the deluge that trapped him in a cave for two weeks without food as punishment for breaking that foolish adolescent promise. Like the downpour on the night he took this frail creature in.

The most memorable moments of his life happened during storms. His entire life nothing more apt than a storm, and this child was caught up in it while another brewed outside the ramshackle apartment.

After having fun tangling Nezumi’s hair, her arms fell limp, her eyes drooped, and her tiny mouth let out a ferocious yawn as she snuggled against chest. He ignored the blue and brown mice’s begging to sleep beside her and waiting for her clenched fist to let go of his ragged shirt. Once she fell asleep, he tucked her and her companions in her makeshift bed, an unused wooden box stuffed with every blanket and towel he salvaged and cleaned, only then realizing how unconsciously domestic he behaved.

Awkward as this all was, he didn't violently cringe in utter disgust at the idea. It's just another set of skills to learn in order to survive the trials that appear before his path forward in the weird journey of life.

Compelled to not needlessly jinx himself after one success in three days, Nezumi stroked the baby’s cheek and whispered before returning to bed for good, “Goodnight, Ranko.” It naturally slipped from his lips like so few words he ever spoke.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You've endured things that would kill a man of lesser fortitude because you refused to let this world change who you are. Nurture and protect that part of yourself that makes you the real you; that's what it really means to survive. If you raise this child, never embrace what isn't you. She comes first, and she can't learn to strive to reach her best potential if you refuse to try yourself."

“You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot?”

― Bram Stoker, _Dracula_

* * *

Eight days later the clouds parted and water cleared from the streets of the slums, the commercial district, and the downtown district, hugging the slopes of the highlands and overlooking the dozens of tea fields stretching for kilometers to the very edge of an 643-meter-high escarpment. This development did not stop the security bureau from keeping the gate shut and guarded by karunka, their robot street dogs. At the right angle when the sun showed itself, streaks of red embedded in the pigment of the elaborate murals of "Heaven's Gate" glow. Local legends claim the structure absorbed the blood of infidels and traitors for centuries before the Babylonian Accord abolished warfare and before migrants from the north, south, and east fled to the last village in the Mambilla Plateau with a functioning economy. Thousands settled roots deep in No.1 as it was built from scratch, like engineers building a plane while it's flying. It only earned its name as the first city-state because its predecessors across the planet succumbed to the same self-destruction that sank entire countries into radioactive craters.

While this city refused to embrace the brand of authoritarian militarism that consumed the old No.6, even with the old and new ethnic tensions questioning how effectively humans could ever achieve peace, Nezumi happily avoided the historic landmark whenever it closed. He’d rather take two hours to get to work by walking around the circumference of the slums and the downtown districts than have any readied defense screen him before letting him pass through the memories of forgotten atrocities.

He had another reason to avoid the gate today; the karunka’s biometric scans would detect a biological male disguised as a woman.

Layers of navy and teal robes he wore protected his limbs and neck from the strong winds, and pins kept the veil in place to cover his hair. Much of his softer adolescent features molded into more angular shapes, but Nezumi’s high cheekbones and long eyelashes preserved his androgyny. His subtle, graceful movements continued to help him steal female character roles, and his ability to manipulate his voice aged like wine despite his speaking voice falling into the baritone range. None of that mattered when trying to fool a machine that cannot process ambiguity and complexity.

Nestled between his robes was brown and Ranko, traces of fever still burning her skin. His mechanical black mouse scouted ahead to lead them to the quickest path to the pediatric clinic where the first contact he made in this city works. One of his mice sent her a message requesting an emergency appointment two days ago, and she cut an hour out of her schedule and made clear what she expected in return. 

He obtained his income from the theater in his detour to the red light district and returned to the black-stoned main street that cooked through his sandals and warmed his feet. Much of where he walked now had tall, condensed modern architecture that fused the rapidly advancing post-wars technology with British, Islamic, Hausa and other African traditions that have survived. Citizens dressed in an array of styles that reflected their ethnicity and religion or embraced the fashion popularized in No.3 or No.2. Despite the superficial acceptance of diversity in theory, many took a second glance at the pale-skinned, black-haired beauty whose native tongue wasn't English and never spoke to him. Nezumi learned enough tricks to the languages spoken to know who were in awe, who were envious, and who were spiteful of his existence behind his back.

Sandwiched between a bookstore and an animal shelter sat the clinic. He could see through expectant mothers and children clinging to the clothes of women as young as fourteen standing and sitting in the waiting room through the thick tinted window. All eyes turned to Nezumi as he entered and sat beside a water cooler with the interface stating it’s out of order. The girls and women gossiped loudly about the recent arrival keeping to “herself” and not fussing over their babies, preventing Nezumi from understanding black's translation of the breaking news update about No.5's first suicide in over a decade. When Ranko whimpered in discomfort, he patted her back gently until she fell back to her state of tranquil silence.

“Hauwa?”

A towering, lanky nurse in his thirties had emerged from the bolted door leading to the examination rooms. 

Nezumi rose to his feet; he only waited twenty minutes. Some women who likely waited for hours cursed and spat at him as he passed. He ignored them, hand cradling Ranko’s head as if the spit burned through his robs and tried to contaminate her weakened body. The nurse ducked his head under the doorframe and led Nezumi to the third room to their right and knocked twice to announce the contact's arrival. When three knocks replied, the nurse ushered Nezumi in and locked the door behind him.

“Be careful how you present yourself,” greeted the doctor, yanking the veil and clips off his head and placing them on her desk beside her yellow hijab she discarded moments ago. When the black mouse climbed her shoulder and chirped its hello, she gave it a tender stroke to its head. " _Khanith_ aren't loved by all here, even the actors."

Nezumi’s laugh was light and gentle as a feather. “Am I to know every insult?”

When the doctor tapped her foot to the ground and shook her head at his blatant ignorance, and thus subpar acting, Nezumi dropped the feminine voice he relied on to keep his disguise and switched from Arabic back to his native Japanese. "Very well. We'll conduct business the long way with a mediator to miss every nuance in my impenetrable rhetoric." 

Even with the most comprehensive translation software found only on the black market installed in his best robot mouse, he was correct. But he also couldn't resist trying to make the woman squirm.

She wasn't impressed. "Please keep your ego in your pants. There's a child present."

“I would never! Where is your bedside humor, Yako? Did you leave it on the wayside like your religion?”

“Only when symbolism gets in the way of duty. And I only insulted you after a fine master of language and manipulation such as yourself took me too seriously." She half-heartedly gestured at the very person she described. "And it's Kuru, rat.” She put on white gloves from beneath the sink and nearby eye chart. Tattoos of hymns and vines etched her skin from her fingers to the base of her skull beneath coiled hair dyed blond. “You have the gold?”

He tossed the bag, landing in the sink, and placed Ranko, drowsy and groaning from waking up suddenly, on the examination table. Brown refused to leave her side and slid between her arm and her torso to prove its conviction. Kuru counted the full payment they agreed to and approached the baby with a frown worrying her face. She didn’t shoo Nezumi or the mice away when they stopped closer to watch her check Ranko’s temperature, breathing, blood pressure, and measurements.

Kuru's expression stayed dark after her silent fifteen minute round of basic tests. “On the second shelf above the microscope is my DNAIR. It’s no bigger than a civilian-standard datapad. It looks like a remote.”

Nezumi’s twisted into a half-smirk as he approached the desk. The black mouse followed him and investigated the clutter on the cool metal desk. “Is the professional actor your assistant now?”

“No more than an engineer based on those robot vermin you craft to do your scavenging.” He gasped in pain and placed a hand over his heart in mock offense. Kuru rolled her eyes, adding, “I could correct your actor statement and call you a professional courtesan, but I’d rather not lose a wealthy client.”

“I don’t get paid enough to sleep with my fans, and my manager doesn’t swing that way even if I wanted to fuck my way to the top." He picked up a white device made to settle in someone's hands with the ease of a stress ball. "Is this the ‘dinar', Yako?”

“ _DNAIR._ Deoxyribonucleic Acid Identity Reader. And yes.”

Watch he did in silence after rolling his eyes. He leaned against the barred window looking into a “dirty” back alley as clean as the “pristine” fig plaza in the slums. Kuru dabbed a swab of saliva from Ranko’s mouth and inserted the sample into the DNAIR. The doctor occasionally baby talked and tickled the infant to make her laugh as she waited for the results to appear on the device's screen. Either it was woman’s inherent nature or a individual’s affinity that proved how incompetent Nezumi was during his days of scrambling futilely to meet the baby’s needs.

“Does she have a name?” asked Kuru, intuiting his insecurity.

_Cheep cheep!_ the mice sang in unison before their master could open his mouth. 

“Ranko.”

“No way anyone here’s going to pronounce that right,” she said. The way her expression softened, however, showed her approval of a young man in his early twenties being responsible as a reluctant parent. “Such a shame. I can't use the name my parents gave me for that reason. If it means anything, use its linguistic equivalent in Arabic, English, and Hausa to make it easier for the locals. Keep that name for official records if you’re adding her to the GCD.”

"I'm not staying long enough to cater to their linguistic deficiencies."

"Glass houses, _fa'r_. Just say what 'Ranko' means. It can't be that bad."

"What if it's an insult in all three languages?"

"They don't share one root language in common, so I doubt it. Are you saying her name's even not good in English? You came to the wrong city-state, where half the population is a native or fluent speaker."

She was right, and he hated to admit it. Had he not learned some English from his books and a few prospective immigrants in the West Block, Nezumi would not have had the essentials to adapt to life in No.3, No.5, and No.1, all of which have English as a government-recognized language. He scratched the back of his neck, both due to his scarf making him itchy and feeling a tad exposed to remember his half-asleep logic at the time he named her. Furthermore, it wasn't even a name in most of the languages still spoken in 2023.

“It's ‘storm’.”

Kuru snorted.

“‘Storm’? Leave it to a rat who scraps up any name that suits his needs to pick something unusual. Did you name her because you 'found her in the middle of a storm'?”

_She didn't_ quite _live up to her namesake_. _"I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou art inclined to sleep." What a pity._ “Just do your damn job,” he spat, staring out the window to hide a dash of pink pedals painted on his cheeks. “I don't pay you enough to endure harassment.”

His mice agreed, chirping indignantly and demanding the woman apologize for mocking their best friend.

“It could be worse,” she assured them. Gargling and babbling, Ranko reached for the stethoscope that Kuru took off and let her play with. “My roommate named her hydrophobic son after an Italian sports car from 1948. They got laughed out of No.3's airport customs and never had their vacation. The name you picked, Ranko, means something more than a 'little boat' no one remembers. Her name probably sounds fine in Japanese, unlike 'Barchetta'.”

The DNAIR beeped and projected the analyzed results. She pressed a few buttons that told the device to transfer the information to Nezumi’s ID bracelet. He opened the info packet to follow along with Kuru's explanation, delivered plainly with forced calm in her voice.

“The good news is she's not brittle-boned. Bad news is she's still sick. This baby doesn’t look it, but she may be at least six months old and might have been a premature birth. She's 40.67 centimeters with a cranial circumference of 34 and weighing 1815.8 grams. She’s underweight, but not so malnourished that she has any vitamin deficiencies. She is capable of adjusting her pitch and volume when babbling, so her language acquisition might not be impaired. She’ll need to drink nutrient-rich formulas for a while until she gains weight, but continue to introduce real food since she can digest it.” 

A notification appeared on Nezumi’s screen, taking him to a list of formulas, their ingredients, and nutritional values. Kuru added a note recommending a reliable brand endorsed by the World Health Organization and made specifically to combat infant malnutrition. He thought of the man who attacked him last week and exhaled the anxious breath he unknowingly held since he first saw Ranko.

“As for her genetics, her mitochondrial DNA has a R haplogroup common in Eurasians, and she has phenotypical traits in common with the Uyghurs, Irish, and Turks. She is a heterozygous sickle cell carrier and has genetic factors that increase her risk for asthma and renal disease. There is more hereditary data that requires a comparison between her and her biological parents, but I cannot identify them. They may not have been registered in the GCD, leaving me no medical records to draw from.”

Nezumi mirrored her furrowed brow. “They must’ve been nomads or homeless if that's the case. Or they purposefully removed themselves from the system. How counterproductive. Even I’m registered.”

Having his identity on file in the Global Census Directory so he could receive advanced medical treatment and pass customs and security screenings was insurance Karan spent three days convincing him to accept as her goodbye and thank-you gift. He complied with only one condition: he would not be listed as a citizen of No.6. There was another which motivated him to avoid official paths in and out of the city-states and to stick with underground networks when he needed to accomplish anything that required the use of his ID if he did not embody his namesake.

"It doesn't matter now. They lost the right to call her their child the moment they threw her in a dumpster." Her fingers danced along the interface drafted up another file for Nezumi. "Here's additional literature to read and review. Childrearing is difficult enough for adult couples. You'll need every reference and resource you can get to anticipate most scenarios."

"Who says I'm going to raise her?" he asked, tone flat and apathetic.

Sighing, Kuru threw away her gloves and made the room immaculate of all traces of their meeting. "Stop pretending you don't have a conscience, rat. It's served you better than detachment."

"Don't talk like you know me, Yako. Stick to science, for your words have the depth of a pond. Rhetoric's not your strong suit."

"Playing a simple machine incapable of feeling isn't yours."

Anger carved ravines in her face, but she spoke with enough patience until the last drop of water on Earth dries. He might have been too delirious to remember that fight, but Kuru could still hear the little boy calling her to heal the so-called "white demon" who chased the traffickers out of the slums. She even gave into his wish to avoid hospitalization and treated his wounds in her own home with every tool to suture vessels and clean open sores.

"You've endured things that would kill a man of lesser fortitude because you refused to let this world change who you are. Nurture and protect that part of yourself that makes you the real you; that's what it really means to survive. If you raise this child, never embrace what isn't you. She comes first, and she can't learn to strive to reach her best potential if you refuse to try yourself."

The base of Nezumi's neck flinched. He could see himself through _his_ eyes. Pleading, voice hoarse from large hands throttling his neck.

 

_"I want you to stay as you are, Shion. No matter what you see here, don't change. Fight yourself if you have to. The Shion I know would never kill anyone."_

 

He rubbed his eyes to erase the warped footage that played. His heart raced, and his breathing shortened, anticipating the flashes of blood, guns, and corpses in bright decontaminated hallways leading to every corner of hell. Nezumi pushed himself off the window and, ignoring the doctor and the baby, snatched his veil from the table. His fingers trembled as he used the mirror over the sink to re-adorn his hair. 

_He's_ _gone_. A pistol lodged between white silk thickets of hair - _NO! Not dead._ _He's alive. Alive, but in the past. He's not your present. Forget him. Forget. Forget. Forget..._

"Whatever's eating you, whatever's scaring you, you need to face it -"

"You think I don't know that?!" A dent in the metal sink tipped the balance of the soap canister until it fell to the metal floor with a plastic clatter. "Just stick to the fucking job I paid you for and don't pry into outside business!"

Kuru did not flinch, but her eyes arched in sadness as the gut feeling she had was proven right by his sudden, violent outburst. Were his voice not so deep, his reflection was the spitting image of a woman who had embraced madness. 

Ranko's shrill cry brought their attention back to who really mattered right now. She writhed, flinging her hands, fists, and feet as she threw her tantrum, showering the adults in shame for their self-absorbed argument. Nezumi would have smirked at the doctor failing to live by her own advice, but he had to calm the baby down.

If he looked confident and in control on the outside, Nezumi was screaming in utter panic inside. Her wails grated at his ears, and he shifted his arms constantly to keep the writhing bundle of hell from falling head-first. Once he found balance and calmed down enough to not be reactionary, he tried the same trick that worked before. He hummed the song, and his thumb stroked her temple right beneath the patch of silk-smooth red hair. Ranko coughed and whimpered as the song pacified her. When her crying ceased, her large brown eyes traced every detail of Nezumi's face, taking in the very different but familiar person who responded to her every need.

"Bah...?" Her pitch raised at the end, as if asking a question.

Nezumi sniffed, lips twitching into an awkward smile. "Yeah, kid. 'Bah'."

"Bah!" Ranko cooed, reaching to touch his face. He leaned close enough for her to whack his nose with her palm. "Bah! Bah!"

The mice and Kuru watched the scene as if it resembled a madonna-and-child painting lost with much of humanity's greatest accomplishments and triumphs. They didn't dare interrupt, instead waiting for Nezumi's inevitable blistering embarrassment and insistence he did not care about the baby and refused to carry it around for how many years it'd take for her to be independent and self-sufficient.

When the cross-dressing young man did just that, Kuru felt the bag of gold weigh heavily in her pocket. Their one hour appointment was up, and Nezumi tucked Ranko and his mice in his robes as he reached for the door that the nurse who let him in earlier unlocked moments before.

"Wait." Kuru threw the bag back, which Nezumi caught on reflex, but didn't mask the doubt and confusion he felt. "Use every coin and bill you earn so she has the life you never got to have, starting with getting her in the GCD."

He clicked his tongue. "Didn't pin you for an altruist. What makes you so sure that's true?"

" _Omae wa faita da, Nezumi_. You'll make it true. _Khuda Hafiz_."

This stranger's stubborn, unfounded belief in him, a "fighter", gave Nezumi the chills; he didn't bother to comment on her speaking his native tongue. It was not unlike the day he woke up in an unfamiliar house, her changing his IV and checking his vitals after surviving the ambush that introduced him to the underbelly of No.1. Without looking back, he left the clinic and dragged his feet to the midtown market and grocer, not for her satisfaction or approval, but for the part of him that has been starving and neglected.

* * *

They told him Ranko's first word was "back." 

But even before her first word, the girl proved to have an inquisitive mind. Once she gained the weight needed to be healthy and normal according to Kuru's literature, she crawled into any nook and cranny of Nezumi's apartment she could squeeze into. He rarely bought her toys because the mice were her constant yet spontaneous playmates. They loved hiding under his bed and attacked his feet whenever Nezumi passed, careful to not kick when Ranko had a death grip on his ankle. Whenever she played too rough, the mice gently bit her, but she didn't cry or throw a tantrum. She saved those outbursts for bedtime, when she demanded Nezumi to sing her to sleep. On the rare days his voice gave out from performing at the theater, especially during a Hausa reinterpretation of  _Carmen_ , he drank ginger and honey-infused water until it left his body on the fast lane to the bathroom and his chords recovered enough to grant the spoiled princess her heart's desire.

Like any other child, she had very specific demands that had to be met or else it's the end of the world. She needed a _shower_ , not a bath, every night ("You're not going to drown in a fucking puddle!" Nezumi yelled over Ranko's glass-shattering shrieks at the sight of the water-and-soap-filled kitchen sink). She stuck up her nose at any food that wasn't green, yellow, or brown ("Do I have to force you not NOT eat what can pass for grass or dirt?" he grumbled when she knocked to the floor her bowl of fresh mixed berries he bought on sale from the uptown import market). She refused to be outside without having a panoramic view of where Nezumi was walking at all times ("Who are you, my mama or a sightseer, princess?" he teased after his ribs recovered from her punches and kicks to free her head from the dark prison of cloths).

Nezumi didn't leave Ranko completely alone when he worked long days during the theater's seasonal peak. An old woman who lived beneath him who had raised her children and grandchildren for most of her life would make sure Ranko had food and a clean diaper at regular intervals. She was the only neighbor who knew the mice lived there, and they, grateful for the sweets and cheese she'd leave for them, could fetch her if they needed help. But this arrangement wasn't enough for blue or black. Three times a week they'd pestered Nezumi in his dressing room to update him on Ranko's wellbeing from her rolling wall-to-wall on her stomach to flipping through the pages of a book he left laying on the floor.

One day in mid-December, brown joined the duo's incessant chirping over Ranko's first word. They nibbled Nezumi's fingers and pulled his pant legs, insisting he return home to witness this amazement development as soon as possible. He did not cave in, but the theater let everyone leave to beat the snowstorm the government forecasted at 22:39 in an emergency broadcast. This fact did not dissuade blue, black, and brown from celebrating the undeniable influence they hold over their master.

Nezumi arrived outside of his door just before midnight to hear Ranko imitating sounds and trying to string them together in a tapestry above the capacity of her budding vocal chords. Amid the sudden pauses, the repetition, and inconsistent keys, he could gather enough pieces of her nonsense to presume what lullaby she was teaching herself. _"Tender Shepard", Peter Pan. 1954._  His understudy taught him the song when she proved she could cover him on nights when he couldn't perform or during Ranko-related emergencies.

Her singing stopped when he unlocked the door. As Nezumi entered, grey and white greeted him first from their lazy lounge with Ranko on the knitted blanket/carpet the old woman left as an early Christmas gift, the first holiday gift he ever received. Ranko, with the massive smile only an innocent could make, sat upright, threw her arms in the air, and shouted.

"Baka!"

When he fled for his life over ten years ago, he nearly broke his neck when discovering the source of the acidic-burning sensation on his arm came from the anticoagulent-coated bullet that grazed him. Nezumi's head _almost_ turned as sharply to his eager greeter. His face contorted, no doubt displaying bafflement and offense. Black and blue leapt to the kitchen counter and joined the chorus of squeaks resembling laughter from the mechanical mice lurking on the bookshelf to brown, white, and grey rolling on the knitted blanket.

It took Nezumi five seconds for his brain to reset and realize the mice set him up.

"Baka!" Her arms stretched out to the infamous "white demon", who gutted dozens, dazzled hundreds, terrified thousands, and was left utterly stupefied by a baby.

Abandoning the knapsack he dropped during the assault, Nezumi sighed through his hands. Once he regained his composure, he supported Ranko with one arm as he searched for the retired superfibre cloth he now used as a sling with the other.

"Baka!"

"Please watch your tongue, my lady." She let out a silent sneeze when Nezumi's finger briefly brushed her nose. "'Bah' isn't a word, but it's more worthy of your station than 'idiot'. Where did you learn that word?"

"Baka!" she insisted, pointing where his furrowed brows met to deepen his glare. "Baka! Baba! Baka! Baba!"

"Ah-ha!" he exclaimed, pinching her healthy cheek gently enough to not make her too upset. "'Baba' is much less insulting, so call me that instead. Besides, I own the rights to 'idiot', so you can't use it without my permission."

Her eyes mimicked his earlier glare. Sitting upright on his bed waiting for the end of the preparations to her throne, she said the forbidden word thrice more until Nezumi finished wrapping the cloth around himself.

When Nezumi adjusted the sling for his princess' optimal comfort, her tiny fists grasped the fabric of his black long-sleeved shirt. Ranko sat upright, her head peaking over the cloth cradling her to watch him wander the tiny apartment and reheat the last of the tomato, spinach, okra, and daddawa soup he made on Tuesday. Sometimes she'd suggest what to add in the food he cooked - usually any ingredient she recommended was yellow or green or brown - and sometimes those experiments ended with a new entree or stew combination that tried to outmatch his Macbeth soup.

When he informed her nothing tasted better than his specialty, she stopped nibbling the piece of heated bread he broke for her when they sat to eat on the couch and grinned, displaying five white teeth emerging from her gums. _Had she grown that fast? Where'd the time go?_

"Baka!"

"How do you even know without having tried it?!"

"Baka!"

"There is no winning against you. Even when you're old enough, I won't let you ever have Macbeth soup. How's that?"

"Baka!"

"FINE! I'm an idiot! Happy? Will you stop now?"

"No!"

Nezumi ate the rest of his dinner in disgruntled silence, watching Ranko laugh, clap, and sing in no particular order for any particular reason.

* * *

The first snowflakes of the first blizzard of winter descended upon the empty streets of the slums, and Nezumi draped blankets over the windows to prevent the heat from escaping the thinly insulated building. Climate change made winters in No.1 harsher than what was once considered normal on the Mambilla Plateau, and it was the humidity that made the coldest and hottest days most unbearable. Newer buildings accommodated the new weather if they lacked climate controlled environment systems, both unlike this relic of a building.

Nezumi shared his bed with Ranko and the mice so they wouldn't depend too much on the old heater that groaned whenever the temperature was raised too high. On a whim Nezumi had picked up a book prior to settling into bed and read it aloud. Ranko stared at him, disappointed his voice was deeper and rougher than she wanted it to be. She didn't express her dissatisfaction for long when Nezumi changed tone, pitch, and accent for each character he brought to life.

"Cesario, thou know'st no less but all. I have unclasped to thee the book even of my secret soul..." He used his usual speaking voice for Orsino, informing the man-disguised Viola to tell Olivia of his love for her. "...Prosper well in this, and thou shalt live as freely as thy lord, to call his fortunes thine."

"I'll do my best to woo your lady -" Then the light octave for Viola became breathy when he conveyed her as herself, "- Yet, a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife."

Ranko's eyes sketched every expression, and her ears every intonation as he drew her further and further into the tale. The mice lay just as absorbed, forgetting their earlier drowsiness from eating too much Persian flatbread from the bakery near the gardens surrounding city hall and the multi-denominational temple shared among the followers of the four main old religions practiced in No.1.

Time passed quickly; the world outside of the apartment ceased to exist. No disease, no poverty, no tribalism, no corrupt men, no foul tempers from the sky would bring the curtain on the show. Nezumi became lost in his own performance too, understanding the wide-eyed stare from the infant who twisted her body so she could never lose sight of the man too incredible to be raising her. There was another emotion flickering in her eyes, but he dared not to think more beyond the girl feeling something more profound than awe.

He used the intermission to fill his tea mug with water to keep up his unpaid overtime that didn't feel like work for once.

"O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be when time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case? Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow, that thine own trip shall be thine overthrow? Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet where thou and I henceforth may never meet!"

Even the timing of his voice growing strained fit the desperate mood of the lines he delivered a little too well. He had to pause a few times to soothe Ranko's distressed whimpers. _Too stubborn, sensitive, and perceptive for her own good_ , he told himself.

As he promised, the play ended with a happily ever after. When the _Twelfth Night_ came to a close and the light of the bedside lamp went out at the crack of dawn, Nezumi closed the book and took a deep sip from his mug. Having had memorized the last lines and still been enraptured by the soul of the play, he got up, sat Ranko upright in bed, and belted into song, centerstage of the one-and-a-half room apartment:

_When that I was and a little tiny boy,_  
_With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,_  
_A foolish thing was but a toy,_  
_For the rain it raineth every day._

_But when I came to man’s estate,_  
_With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,_  
_'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,_  
_For the rain it raineth every day._

_But when I came, alas! to wive,_  
_With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,_  
_By swaggering could I never thrive,_  
_For the rain it raineth every day._

_But when I came unto my beds,_  
_With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,_  
_With toss-pots still had drunken heads,_  
_For the rain it raineth every day._

_A great while ago the world begun,_  
_With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,_  
_But that’s all one, our play is done,_  
_And we’ll strive to please you every day._

Out of breath and muscles sore from dancing to the point of overexertion, Nezumi bowed before eight of his devoted fans, cheering as loud as their little bodies could muster. Their neighbors complained about their ruckus until the day they left the city, but with enough food, blankets, books, and free time to rest and stay indoors for an entire day if he wished, Nezumi would never apologize for the most spontaneous fun he had since... He could probably remember when if he wanted to entertain the thought, which he didn't.

 

_"One two three... one two three... one two three..."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think Nezumi's reaction to being called an idiot by a toddler is identical to when Shion named his mice in the anime. Priceless. XD


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five months. Nearly a year old and in his care for five months. It didn't dawn upon Nezumi until open nature gave him ample time to think, to think of what he had just left behind. He had forgotten the existential dread that filled the empty spaces around and within him whenever he set out into the lands beyond the confines of six so-called utopias. The little things begot them, like every time Ranko's brown eyes stared into his. Every day they grew more steady, more curious, more knowing, like her consciousness is developing at a faster rate than her little body can keep up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a lot more clumsy typos than usual last time, and I think I caught the worst of them. This chapter should be of higher quality, not just because readers deserve better, but because I need to live up to my own standards as a semi-competent writer. Enjoy, and, as always, constructive feedback is welcome.

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” 

― Louisa May Alcott, _Little Women_

* * *

Nezumi originally planned to leave No.1 no later than the end of January 2024, but change in circumstances made him decide on the dawn of December 31, 2023 instead.

Most commercial businesses and government offices closed on the celebration of the armistice that marked an end to the wars that persisted into the last decade of the twentieth century. The global armistice dissolved the remaining countries once recognized before the collapse of the United Nations that refused to recognize the sovereignty of the newly bred and prospering six city-states. As most holidays have struggled in the new world to regain official recognition beyond quaint preservation in museums, the combined New Year's Eve and New Year's Day served as the easiest for disparate peoples to recognize and adopt a new holiday that birthed thirty-one years without war. Every state celebrated differently, but festivities and drink left people too euphoric and entranced to notice anything beneath their mad high. Some sectors of the black market had reduced business; others shot fish in a barrel and made exorbitant profits.

Kuru had lamented her inability to tap into her customer base while on call at the clinic. Not two minutes later, a suited man interrupted her meeting with Nezumi about forging documents for Ranko's GCD registration and asked for specific medicine that the doctor had a license to sell. The man gave her half his case worth of gold, and Kuru sealed the transaction with a smile that Nezumi instinctively distrusted. Her customer did not seem to notice the obvious and left none the wiser. After sending a colorful and scathing message to the nurse who failed to send the man away until his scheduled time, Kuru answered the question she knew Nezumi wanted to ask.

"Traffic-briber in the health promotion program in the education bureau. He's one of those customers who shows up on my off-hours when they have an 'emergency'. Technocratic parasite. Hopefully those placebos will fool his clients when the kids they abduct aren't properly sedated."

She slipped the gold in an ID-recognition safe she kept in one of the fake drawers in her desk. Nezumi remained skeptical over her calm return to reviewing the essential details for a birth certificate. Through pained impatience, Kuru continued, "Sedatives are in such hot demand right now that the pharmaceutical companies in No.2 and No.5 can't keep up. Most shipments get lost in transit by pirate and gang attacks so the drugs cost a fortune for the legal and illegal markets. I don't have two jobs because I like working to death."

Economics and medicine were not his forte, so Nezumi took her word for it, even if Kuru read the blank expression on his face as apathy.

But her misunderstanding revealed more than he bargained for. "Traffickers prefer Mandrax." Her expression hardened, and she moved to fetch her personal ID card from her coat hanging by the door. "They put enough in you so you're out for nearly a day and too sick to figure out where and how far they took you. Once you wake up, they already decided what to do with you, so you pray to whatever god you believe in that you're a slave instead of a specimen."

Nezumi stared down at the woman, shorter than him by a hair. "Why tell me this?"

"I used to treat escapees at the general hospital. Too few survived. I don't make as much here as I used to, but... the patients here look and act their age if not younger."

She left it at that, but her insistence to get the paperwork straightened out for Ranko allowed Nezumi to add two and two together. That was the first warning.

The second warning came from his understudy when she learned of Ranko. _Carmen_ would premiere that Friday in late October, and rehersal lasted for fourteen hours until three in the morning. She and Nezumi shared a changing room in the small but well-to-do theater, and she walked in on Nezumi whispering frantically and arguing with his blue and black mice. He urged them to not be too loud as they worried over a suspicious stranger lurking around the apartment complex. They obeyed, but the understudy wondered how they could when their master's hair fell out of its chigon, the back of his corset was half-tied, and harsh lines cut into the meticulous makeup that did not survive the range of expressions Nezumi only displayed on the stage or when no one was around.

"... the old woman to look after her! And there are fifty residents to fend off that guy, so why should I drop everything for that when I don't get out for another five hours!"

_Chit-chit! Cheep, cheep, cheep!_

"I am not her father! How many times do I have to say it before either of you remember to leave the apartment with your intelligence intact?!"

Enraged and indigent, a black blur climbed the top to the vanity, jumped, dove for Nezumi's shoulder, and bit into his right earlobe. Nezumi struggled with the robot mouse and fought the impulse to swat at and throw his first invention to the stone floor. Blue noticed the understudy first amidst the fight and darted to her feet, standing on two feet and begging. When Nezumi traced the path the mouse took, his spine stiffened and the only traces of anxiety he displayed were a little spark in his otherwise calm grey eyes. Letting let its master nurse his well-deserved injury, black stared expectantly at the understudy.

"That stranger, what do they look like?" she asked, kneeling down to blue and cupping her hands for its eyes and hers to be level. "Do they got a sun tattoo on their neck? A yellow spiral on their clothes?"

 _Cheep!_  Black's grey eyes projected the image of the person in the middle of the room with the two mentioned features highlighted.

 _Chirp chit!_ Blue's paws tapped her thumb in rapid succession.

The understudy nodded and placed the relieved mouse on the vanity. She threw a glare at Nezumi, expression unchanged in spite of this development and his bleeding ear. "Change 'nd go home. I'll cover you. Manager can fire me if he don't like it." When he remained still and continued to stare, she freed him of the corset's binding and shoved his clothes in his arms. "Get your ass moving! Now!"

She refused to buy the nonchalance Nezumi projected, and he caved after she stripped him down to his underwear. Nezumi snuck out of the theater and returned home to find Ranko holding onto the back of the couch to support her wobbly legs and smiling at his sudden return.  _Safe and sound_. He searched the complex and found no evidence of the mysterious person. None of the residents seemed aware that there was a stranger at all, but the rat smelled their denial, especially the middle-aged woman on the third floor who held herself calmly for a mother of five.

Nezumi didn't know how much the understudy overheard his and his mice's argument or if she really knew about Ranko, but she came clean the next day when she apologized for her impropriety. They discussed the matter further over their one hour break for supper at a tavern with food and aesthetics - real relics and holographic recreations - reminiscent of Victorian London.

"Fifteen kids got taken from the slums this past week." Nezumi's understudy picked the dirt under her blunted nails when they weren't digging into her skin, covered in fading crescent scars. "All looked different: light-born eyes or hair. My sis' neighbor lost their albino son to those fuckers. I don't care if she's yours or not, but keep them away from Storm. They ain't the normal hunters or 'nappers, Rat. They've got a business to run 'nd no one who gets out lives long enough to get back normal. And they damn well know reds are near impossible to find."

As weeks passed, the poor were not the only targets. The news eventually covered the kidnappings once children from uptown families disappeared. Emergency measures pushed through legislation after the fiscal minister's blue-eyed daughter was taken had forced the security bureau to place more bodies in uniforms and patrol "at risk" districts more frequently. Once migration and citizenship processing protocols were tightened to determine if the culprits operated in a group inside or outside the city, Nezumi had finalized Ranko's registration with the Global Census Directory as a No.1-born citizen. He had walked out of the Census Office with her adjustable ID bracelet and let his princess hold the device in her mittened hands when someone bumped into them. Nezumi checked his pockets and the sling to find nothing was stolen, but a pair of cold arrows pierced his back. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted a yellow spiral in their decorative scarf before they disappeared into the building.

Not willing to take any more chances if others were out, Nezumi lifted part of his worn superfibre cloth over his head. He took a long, convoluted way back to the apartment in spite of the late December cold. Ranko burrowed deep in the sling and whimpered into his leather jacket. He stroked her shivering back and assured her they were almost there.

"You're getting better at this."

The voice came from his left side. Nezumi kept his eyes facing forward.

"I knew you'd keep her. I don't know how to explain why I feel this is true, but she's just what you need right now. It might not look like it, but you're doing a great job, Nezumi. She really likes you, and you're going to be a great father to her, even if you don't believe it yourself."

Nezumi clenched his jaw to stifle a sigh, the bad habit that refused to die. If he had a coin for every time Kuru, the old woman, or a random stranger said any version of "You'll be a great parent" or "Maybe try having your own?" or "It's normal for fathers to take a longer time to become attached to their children than mothers", he'd buy out all six city-states and still have enough change to fill the oceans from floor to the wave.

Part of him wanted to respond to the voice, to call _him_ out on such pollyanna bullshit and to please leave him the fuck alone forever. But doing so would validate the delusion and succumb to clinical insanity, both things he wanted to avoid no matter how tempting. The past cannot and will not have him, even if he has to amputate his legs. His arms will carry him forward. Nezumi also didn't want to remind himself that he hadn't heard the voice since that night in July when he found Ranko. Forgetting _him_ has been easier with a baby demanding his attention and thoughts more than the theater, his mice, and his own well-being combined. But acknowledging that accomplishment would only open the door for thoughts and dreams and nightmares of _him_ to rush over and drag Nezumi under and into the pit he can never escape.

Nezumi kept on walking, ignoring the voice's annoying words of encouragement, and filled his thoughts only of escaping the sights of the traffickers and bribers. He had no destination in mind, only resolve and the baby that depended on him to survive.

* * *

Two days before December 31st, the old woman and Nezumi’s understudy offered to take the books he left and donate the rare volumes and first editions he found over the past year to the city's archival library. Only two would join him on his journey,  _The Snow Queen_  and  _The Tempest_. With how many mixed signals Ranko learned to give off to distressingly predictable results, Nezumi convinced himself that her taking periodic naps on those two books after turning their pages all day was her rational way of asking him to read them to her in the future.

The women did not overstay their welcome, but they offered additional food for Nezumi to pack along with stories of their lives he had no idea how to deal with. Neither could write, but they insisted a wandering performer such as him would have a trove of tales to tell. As he listened, however, he saw threads extend from their hearts to find his, and rather than let them tangle and meld with his he expressed interest in them and penned their tales in his mental library as they wished without showing the true path to his heart.

The understudy dreamed of the future and the old woman of the past. With art, history, and high culture as the rich lifeblood for their souls to thrive in the slums, how could they be unhappy? Nezumi didn't realize how impoverished he really was until the women left his hollow apartment at dusk.

One day before their departure, brown, the last of Hamlet and Cravat's children, passed away in the middle of the night, but not before witnessing his daughter give birth to four pups, three bearing the grape-colored eyes of their great-grandparents. Ranko cried when she found brown laying still beside her in the morning, and Nezumi spent the entire day calming her down when three other mice said they wished to stay behind. They weren’t as old as brown and hated parting from their human companions, but the grey mother and her pups needed additional food and support the others could not share fairly over long indeterminate periods of time. Choosing to stay by her side until death, blue curled around Ranko's neck, and its warmth consoled the infant. While Ranko did not fully understand what was happening until the moment they left the apartment, they all played as if this was not their last day together.

Nezumi caved into their demands and sang for them, a song of parting that did not spell the end or kill the hope for a reunion. The song Rou learned as a child and passed to Nezumi when he first heard the child's gift. The song he tried to ease himself as he stumbled back into the vast unknown, alone as always, with violent sobs that threatened to expel every organ from his body. No road greeted him in lands that hadn't seen water in months, and the wind's wrath turned his tear-drenched face to ice the hottest sun could never melt. The scene was more fitting of a penny dreadful than a humiliating snippet of his life. He sang that song, focusing only on the words and not the history around it or what it meant to him, something he hoped his audience were too young or unintelligent to notice.

When the hour to leave came at last, Nezumi performed one last check of his knapsack while the mice said their goodbyes to each other and Ranko.  They had enough vacuum-packed rations for three months if they found nothing edible in the wastelands, and Kuru had a friend repair his LED generator as partial payment for Nezumi helping his blond-born sister and niece out of the city through the water bureau purification division's maintenance tunnels. The rest of the payment was in gold, which Nezumi used to purchase spare parts to give his two robot mice their long-overdue upgrades to survive the environments outside the city. Once he was satisfied with the number of clothes and supplies - including a mini toolkit, his knife, and the two books - he counted heads: himself, Ranko, blue, grey, grey's four pups, and the black and white mechanical mice. Packed and ready, Nezumi wiped away the last of the baby's tears before they faced the cold winds for however long their journey would last.

It was two hours before dawn, giving Nezumi enough time to slink in the shadows of the slums. He avoided the wails of the brittle-boned homeless and the patrol of a street gang of smugglers until he reached the water treatment facility along the northern border overlooking the panoramic view of Tea Leaf Gorge. Bundled in layers and a hat the understudy had knitted for her, Ranko silently watched the white mouse hack the lock of the campus gate. Once inside, Nezumi crouched through the thickets, avoiding the view range of the surveillance cameras. His two mechanical mice had scouted the outside of the facility and the maintenance tunnels thoroughly enough for this to be the quietest and quickest path out of the city.

In an obscure corner of the property beneath a gangly old tree nicknamed Black Atar lay the hidden emergency exit to the tunnels. Black chirped when Nezumi's foot tapped the right patch of dirt. After he lifted the secret door to the tunnels, a waft of metallic rust punched Nezumi in the face.

 

_He runs through the forest near the main road to the airport. Sticks and rocks cut into the soles of his bare feet. Tree branches and thorns tear his oversized shirt as he combs through, forward, and away from the special ops soldiers. His heart slams against his ribs._

_He hears nothing but the shallow, rapid breaths his body takes in and out. Clusters of fuzzy stars mute the tangled green and blind him._

_His legs seize and give out, forcing him to his knees before a berry bush along a shallow creek. His breaths catch up to him as he rests and his vision restores. The cold morning waters are needles in his strained throat as he drinks the water he doesn't know he needs._

_The voices encircle him and close in. He has to move but can't._

_The creek calls to him through his panic-haze and shows him how to survive._ _He holds his breath and rolls in the water until he became living ice. The berries have no flavor. His reflection in the water is a corpse._

_He runs again. The men do not find him. How big is this forest when much of it was burned? He doesn't notice the spider leaking venom into the vessels of his back._

_He finds the wall back to freedom. The tunnels. Gran told him all about the tunnels. Gran who -_ _No, she is the past now. Run. Live. Forget._

 _He opens the secret door._ _A foul cloud rots his lungs._

_A mother. Two children._

_Floating._

_The soldier shoves him face-first into the mud and pinches a nerve in his neck._

_White. Blurry. Cold._

_Cuts in his mouth. Fire in his blood. Binds to his wrists and ankles._

_"- sever your tongue -"_

 

“Baba!"

Ranko kicked Nezumi near his liver. He shook his head, discarding the memory he stopped having nightmares about after living long enough in the West Block to become accustomed to corpses. Yet his stomach still churned, processing the images and sounds his conscious mind once abandoned.  _Why am I remembering that now...? It doesn't matter. Go._

Nezumi took one last glance at the sky, a haze of dark grey bleeding into the deep indigo and black, before closing the hatch behind him and climbing down the ladder. He descended to the platform a meter above the water to avoid ruining the new, sturdy boots he wore. Grey left blue and her pups for a moment to stretch her legs and walk beside her master and the mechanical mice. When it finished re-calculating its compass, the white robot mouse lit its red eyes to guide them. Nezumi's nose adapted to the stench of water eating metal better than the pups or Ranko, all who complained as much as he over the murky brown water wanting to soften the integrity of his boots when he had to navigate through low-priority sections of the maintenance tunnel.

No.1 continued to rely on aquifers to supply water to the population until the joint university-government project to create underground rivers connecting the Atlantic Ocean is completed by 2028. Earthquakes along the coasts have stalled the project, but the scientists and construction workers shared use of the water purification maintenance tunnels, which were expanded to go for 100km towards the ocean. Be it the fact the government hasn't discovered how traffickers move around the city, or the memory of finding the drowned family getting to him, Nezumi navigated through the tunnels for only twenty kilometers before climbing a rusty ladder and leaving through an emergency exit.

The white rays of the morning sun struck the rat's eyes in greeting. He lifted himself out and stayed low to the ground as his vision readjusted to the wasteland beyond the oasis No.1 claimed. His clothes sufficiently protected him, Ranko, and the living mice from the light and the wind, both cruel and merciless in winter; and he had forgotten how temperate the climate of the city really was. Brushing dirt off his pants, he made another headcount to ensure everyone was still with him and began the long journey towards the Atlantic to the west.

Not once did Ranko willingly expose herself to the elements, even if some of the views of the hilly scrublands were exquisitely desolate. Nezumi forced her to look every half hour to have her eyes adjust to the light, and she complained magnificently in her every defeat. Though still not developed enough to take in the world as her protector did, Ranko's eyes widened at the vast emptiness and quiet of the world. Could she notice the fine details, no prints marred the dirt but Nezumi's, no incongruous colors painted the monochrome landscape but Nezumi's dark clothing, and no sound disturbed the symphony of silence but Nezumi's boots brushing the brittle vegetation. The human bearing the name of an invasive pest disturbed the serenity of the healing world. The cloudless blue dome expanded to infinity; one wrong step would lead them to the edge to be consumed by the sky. Nothing made sense to her mind but the natural colors and space, and they overwhelmed her to the point of tears. Nezumi dried them immediately, giving the cold no room to claim her at her most vulnerable.

Five months. Nearly a year old and in his care for five months. It didn't dawn upon Nezumi until open nature gave him ample time to think, to think of what he had just left behind. He had forgotten the existential dread that filled the empty spaces around and within him whenever he set out into the lands beyond the confines of six so-called utopias. The little things begot them, like every time Ranko's brown eyes stared into his. Every day they grew more steady, more curious, more knowing, like her consciousness is developing at a faster rate than her little body can keep up.

 _She has no idea how incapable she is of surviving in this world. If I raise her, she'll be a burden, an opening, a weakness, an attachment. She still doesn't know better, so it might not be too late._ _Should I keep her or -_

"Hm-hm?" 

Two hums. Sometimes Ranko would be kind enough to not throw a tantrum when she wanted something.

Nezumi shelved his thoughts and looked down at the infant. "Wait for bedtime, kid. We don't have enough water for me to use my voice all day for your entertainment."

Her head cocked to the right. A tendril of red slipped into view from beneath the superfibre sling.

"Don't act like you didn't understand me. Just so you know, you need to learn how to walk out here. One day you'll be too heavy for me to haul you and our stuff around at the same time."

She blinked.

"Forget it. You need to work on your communication too. You'll die out here otherwise."

Her lips trembled as she then spat, "Baka!"

Nezumi sighed and covered her face with the cloth to not be blinded by the sun... and to not feel her eyes drilling holes into him. But sighing as often as he did reawakened a spirit of the dead he payed reverence to by betraying everything she taught him. Turning his gaze to the perfect azure above, the words she carved into his mind slipped between his drying lips soon to be craving water: 

"Never sigh, never cry from the bottom of your heart. Sighing will create a crevice for demons to enter. If you want to live, keep your mouth shut. Never let anyone see your weakness. Never bear your heart to anyone, never fall in love. Never trust or believe in anyone."

_How did you do it, Gran? Wasn't I a burden to you? How did you care for me while telling me that attachments will be my death? How did you reconcile your words and actions? Why did you rescue me?_

Such soul-searching brought back too many memories that had a stranglehold of his vital organs, and he valued them too much to risk his wellbeing in spite of his nomadic lifestyle. Some questions will never be answered. He pondered the profound questions of life like any other soul, but Nezumi found no benefit in uttering them aloud. If the greatest artists, scientists, philosophers, and demagogues didn't get any closer to the truth, he wouldn't either, and definitely not anyone else.

The existential tsunami he felt dissipated when he focused his mind on the environment. The lack of disturbances or hints of wildlife gave Nezumi the sense he would not find water until they reached the tributary that first led him to No.1. Four days. He told grey and blue to keep their pups alive as best they could until then, and they kept to themselves for much of the day.

Around mid afternoon, eight stomaches grumbled. The wind slowed and the humidity remained low; with the weather's cooperation they had made more progress than Nezumi anticipated. He set up a small fire to last about an hour at the edge of an escarpment overlooking a hazy moss green valley of exposed granite and other rocks of countless hues and shades of ochre. Patches of budding bushes tangled among the dead vegetation reached for the sun's rays before the light hit the landscape at the right angle to blanket the valley in long shadows.

Ranko had forgotten about eating when a river of birds flew over the scape, introducing dozens of new colors, shapes, movements, and sounds to her senses. Nezumi's long finger turned her cheek to face him and acknowledge the cold soup and colder spoon he held out for her. Ranko's face scrunched up when she tasted and swallowed her food. Her expression remained unchanged as she refused the next warmer spoonful. Nezumi didn't know whether to find her behavior intelligent, annoying, cute, or a bit of all three. 

When they finished and let white continue to recharge in the sun, Nezumi followed the infant's eyes. The birds - their species name long lost - performed a dance resembling the movement of waves on the surface of the ocean. "Wait until it's night, Ranko. That's when the world's really alive."

A piece of carrot stuck to her face, she stared at him blankly. "Nai?"

Laughing, Nezumi picked the food and let her eat it from his fingers. "Just trust me. Living in that petri dish of a city your whole life isn't good for your health. Seeing the world for what it really is will let you understand what all those writers and poets cited long before you or I were born."

Grey chirped, agreeing with her master. She leapt onto Ranko's lap and they played a game with their hands and paws. Her family laid between Nezumi and the knapsack so Ranko would not accidentally hurt the blind pups. Black sat on standby, focusing on the birds so none would dare come close to them and try to take him, white, or his living companions.

They traveled another fifty kilometers before Nezumi set camp along a hill protecting them from the wind and granting front-row seats to the constellations shining in the unpolluted sky. The mice went to sleep in the nest of clothes Nezumi made for them in his knapsack shortly after dinner to keep the pups warm into the night. Ranko's eyes were fixed upon the stars and refused to sleep when Nezumi bundled her in the knitted blanket. Instead of fighting her, he sat her on his lap and named all the constellations she pointed to that he could recognize and their origins if they were remembered in the atlases he read.

When he exhausted that knowledge, he turned elsewhere to fill Ranko's hungry mind with words. "'I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch the earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.'"

"Wha?"

"Just an old Greek man who studied the sciences without losing himself or the ability to articulate the artistry of the world he observed. You'll understand when you get older. The books he wrote are a bit too high concept at your point in development, princess."

Ranko made a sound that Nezumi presumed was her trying to blow a raspberry.

His finger brushed against her nose in retaliation; he smirked when she sneezed. _Predictable._  "Go and be mad or call me an idiot, but sometimes I do know what I'm talking about."

She made the sound again and topped it off with a giggle. Treating it as an open invitation for trouble, Nezumi poked her side, causing her to laugh and fall back against his chest. He learned of this common sensitive area when he dried her after a "shower" and brown sniffed her clean, tender skin. The trick worked sometimes when he wasn't in the mood for singing, not unlike this in the middle of a desert of nowhere under a night sky no citizen within the bright, busy city-states could ever see or dream of.

Her laughter suddenly stopped. Ranko's eyes widened and glowed as she pointed at the sky. "Baba! Baba!"

Nezumi looked up and his breath hitched. White streaks joined the static dots adorning the sky. They watched the meteor shower in silence, save for his black mouse reminding him of the time and the need to get sleep before setting out again. Like the spellbound infant warm and safe in his arms, Nezumi didn't care. Something in that celestial phenomena seized and ensnared him.

Not one figment of the breadth of knowledge he imparted to her stayed in her head but the cadence of words spoken by another soul Ranko only rediscovered much, much later when his long journey finally came to an end. He muttered so softly, but all the world's cries could surround them and Nezumi's unbroken and clear voice would still reach her ears: 

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities."

That night sky that allowed even the faintest of stars to display their full beauty before their brighter kin and the meteors, that gorge before them with not a hint of artificial light in the horizon to show how far they left No.1, those words that revealed more about her father than he would ever know... they encompassed Ranko's oldest and most treasured memory of her childhood.

* * *

Nezumi awoke in the morning to Ranko's laughter.

"That's a good girl!"

The unfamiliar voice struck a nerve Nezumi never imagined existing inside his body. That sensation and his shock of feeling it broke him from sleep instantly. But he kept his eyes closed and ignored that impulse to strike in order to listen to his surroundings. Neither the real nor the mechanical mice tried to wake him up. Either they didn't register the person as a threat or they were planning an attack of their own. He heard movement of hands and clothes from two figures: Ranko and the stranger. With a slight movement to his hip he felt his knife safe in his pocket.

"Let's try another one. This right here is a rock. Say 'rock'."

"Rah!"

How quickly the infant responded to the stranger... but Nezumi didn't focus on that. _They're speaking in English_. He slowly slipped his hand into his pocket, and the handle of his blade molded to his hand like being embraced by a lover.

"How's a smart girl like you this far out from the city, huh?"

"Baba!"

"'Baba'? Don't you mean 'mama'?"

"Baba! Baka baba!"

"What's a 'baka baba'?"

Nezumi didn't bother to suppress his smirk beneath his superfibre cloth. The sounds moved closer and slowed. He counted the seconds. When the movement stopped, he imagined the stranger looking down on his still form, assuming he's asleep or -

"I'm sorry if that's your 'baba', but she's dead. I checked her myself. She's not gonna wake up."

The words themselves didn't convey the meaning, but the tone did. Ranko made a low whimper Nezumi knew too well. He used that same tone when explaining what happened to brown, and her reaction was much the same. When the short breaths and piercing gasps spelled the beginning of a storm of tears, anger joined in the instinctive screaming inside his body, ready to strike at any second.

"O-Oh no, I'm sorry, sweetheart! Please don't cry! E-Everything's gonna be alright now! I-I'll - er... I'll find you a new baba! I promise!"

" _No_!"

"Ow! Please don't kick me! I'll get you to a safe place -"

Nezumi sprung from his blanket and scared the stranger. At his heels were his mechanical mice and blue, launching for the stranger's feet and climbing up their pant leg. They screamed and nearly dropped Ranko, eyes bulging and fixed on the person who was supposed to be "dead". Nezumi would have caught her if she fell, but he spun around the stranger and held his blade to their throat. His free hand clutched at the arm supporting the hysterical infant.

"Place her down on the blanket. Gently," he hissed in their ear. With metallic teeth close to the stranger's jugular, black had the decency to translate his master's threat.

The stranger didn't flinch, but their voice raised an octave when they replied, "Y-You're... a man?"

 _Really? THAT's your reaction?_  "Should've checked me closer to miss my being alive and male, but I appreciate not sticking your hand down my pants." The blade pressed into the skin right at the point when moving a hair would slice it apart. "Unless..." His eyes wandered to the ink on a skin a person dressed in a suit would do better to hide: a sun tattoo. "Unless it didn't matter if I were alive or not. How much are reds worth to make you above murdering her father before her eyes? Or were you planning to take her and have your backup do the dirty deed and have the damsel be none the wiser?"

The stranger snorted. "How old are you?"

"Place her on my blanket, carefully, and I'll tell you."

White squeaked. Nezumi's eyes darted to the mouse, whose snout pointed to a black bag next to his knapsack. When it chirped again, he noticed the pitch was a tad distorted only someone familiar with the six-year-old robot's tics would detect.

"Young enough to think a trick like that will work on me. Do you really think I came alone?"

"Why else wouldn't you drag a bag that big around?"

A drop of sweat ran behind the stranger's ear and down the back of their neck.

"You came alone, but you brought equipment so your friends knew where you were at all times. They're far enough to not be seen, but close enough to respond quickly if you're in danger. Said tracking devices might also have a scrambler so no radio waves or signals could detect you. Nice suit, by the way. Did it cost about the same or more than your toys?"

The stranger chuckled, amused, but their muscle shoulders relaxed. "Very astute. I'll comply."

Nezumi gave a slight girth to allow the stranger to walk close to the blanket and lay the inconsolable Ranko down. The blade never left their throat as they knelt. Her crying did not cease when she was safe from the stranger's hold, and especially not when the stranger twisted in Nezumi's grip and pulled their own knife on him. The mice bit each of their hands, and Nezumi contorted his arm to force the stranger to drop the weapon. A kick to his leg made him stumble, but he swung his knife upward, almost slicing the stranger's nose off.

The suit limited the stranger's movement significantly more than the crazy brittle-boned man did, and Nezumi pulled them close to disorient before throwing them to the ground. He dropped down, straddling their waist, one hand pinning their wrists above their head and the other positioning the blade back at the throat. Black and grey stood on their chest to get between them, but Nezumi could only see, feel, and hear the stranger struggle beneath him.

Paralyzed from head to foot, they laughed nervously. "You've done this before, white demon. Impressive."

A number of lines could have been said before Nezumi cut into their jugular. "And you'll never steal another child again" or "Not as impressive as my next trick" or "Only one of us is the real demon". None of them seemed appropriate but one, and fuck it if it was cliche or unoriginal, he thought approriate. 

Nezumi's voice was flat, yet colder than the strongest winds in the coldest winter. "Ranko is _not_ your sweetheart."

His knife itched to let the trafficker writhe and bleed out, ending their useless life and sparing countless of potential victims from the torment awaiting them. From slavery or death or worse atrocities Nezumi could not name aloud lest the wind carry the idea and whisper it to a mind twisted enough to perform the new technique on an innocent.

He prepared to strike, until a hand rested on his. There needn't be a voice to accompany it.

Ranko's confused whimpers and shrieks grated at his ears more than her crying ever did.

_What... What am I doing?!_

"You gonna kill me in front of your princess, sir knight?" The trafficker, not oblivious to the changes to his enemy's demeanor, mocked with a maggot-infested sneer.

Whatever had a hold of Nezumi's senses before made him hyper-aware of what mattered around and within him. Ranko's distress reached him. The mice's pleas reached him. The man guiding No.6 to a peaceful future who stayed his blade reached him. Nezumi dropped his knife and hit the trafficker near the temple, instantly knocking them out cold.

He threw himself off the stranger to release the breath he didn't know his numb body held. A hurricane of emotions brewed in his chest: rage, fear, disgust. Closing his eyes, he could see the security bureau agent shot in the head and the one who killed him. So close. Nezumi nearly crossed that same line, and he had no awareness of it. A thick layer of slimy shame coated him and only thickened when a small body wrapped itself around his arm. With a heavy sigh, Nezumi faced his judge and jury.

"B-Baba?"

Ranko's irises shared the color of sweet breads made by an incredible woman who waited for months to be reunited with her son. Such eyes bearing an innocent, beautiful color should never display such profound terror and sadness within a child who had not yet lived to her first birthday. Killing the trafficker would have ensured Ranko's safety, but Nezumi  _knew_  with every fiber of his being that the price he had to pay was too high.

He slipped his arm free from her grasp and pulled her into what he hoped was a hug. Ranko whimpered and clung even tighter to her caretaker. With her face buried in the hair that fell lose from his ponytail, Nezumi never felt so small and helpless to this feeling sprouting in a neglected corner of his heart that he refused to name. 

"It's over, Ran. It's over. Let's go, okay? Let's go."

Once they recovered from the encounter, the mice had finished disabling the tracking devices in the black bag. Nezumi salvaged as much as he could add to his person from the equipment to study later. Traffickers could be anywhere, and any advantage and resource could fend them off in future inevitable encounters.

The Atlantic, and their unknown final destination, couldn't come soon enough.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi found himself at the stern of the ship and gripping the railing until his porcelain fingers lost circulation. Five minutes had passed in seconds. Too many extreme emotions waged a battle in every extremity, and overexertion from everything in life to this moment made bile and acid boil in his gut. Why did the words of a child he had no biological connection to and had known for nine months leave him in this state? Why did he care about her happiness?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work has kept me busy and tired, but I wrote another chapter. I don't like forcing myself to write when I'm not entirely there mentally and emotionally, which also contributed to the one-month period between this chapter and the last. I'll do my best to update regularly enough since there seems to be some interest in this fic. ^_^'

"The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the road, and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming."

— Bashō Matsuo, _The Narrow Road to the Interior_

* * *

Life finds a way. 

Between the Mambilla Plateau and the Atlantic Ocean lay pockets of inconstant climate shifts, leaving the land perpetually incapable of producing viable life for more than two years. Months of flash floods, droughts, and sandstorms made permanent settlement impossible; mounds of mangled raw materials abandoned within a valley or eroded incomplete skeletons scattered across miles shared stories and warned fools of the fate of the ill-prepared. Yet life tried to find a way with all odds against it. Hope made people do stupid things that sometimes led to good outcomes. With every budding village that won the lottery, with every nomad he met, Nezumi suspected there was a lesson or two he still had to learn. As difficult as it can be for the pessimist to admit idealism has won the ideological argument, he had no use filling his head with baseless hopes for impossible wishes to become reality. It required too much effort already spent on navigating the wastelands and raising a princess who refused to walk and swim.

What would have taken a month to reach the coast took two with Ranko being Ranko. When the skies were clear for days, Nezumi let her out of the sling and let the mice nip at her feet if she didn't start to walk. Black threatened to give its master a bloody pinkie for his cruelty, but grey gently nudged the girl just as she encouraged her kids to see the world outside of worn, but loved, cloths. She wobbled and fell on her face enough times for scrapes to harden the gentle skin of her arms and legs, saved by salves Nezumi bought from an albino merchant who ferried them along a several-hundred square kilometer lake in what used to be a desert. After giving up a fourth of his gold for the ride, unsolicited parenting advice, and the coordinates to a port hamlet, Nezumi saved swimming lessons for after her first bath. That day could not come sooner if they are to cross an ocean where endless battles between warm and cold air drove many ships beneath salty, corrosive waves.

But on days Ranko cooperated, nature sometimes mislead the intuitions of Nezumi and his mice with false senses of how close they were to the coast. Two weeks after the encounter with the trafficker, he and black repurposed the salvage to upgrade white's navigational and tracking capabilities. He did not recognize the language and craftsmanship of the technology, and his robot mice had to overcompensate for their inability to decipher and adapt to the alien coding. Even if the traffickers used superior hardware and software, they still lacked a meaningful map to add to white's, but it proved more reliable than most sources. If the best minds in the city-states could not devise accurate maps of the regions surrounding them, hardly anyone else could correct humanity's biggest blind spot.

With some of its programs compromised due to the upgrades, white relied on black to translate some of the communications it intercepted when the human-mice party wandered too close. A small group operated near No.1 and its sister "organization" patrolled the Red-Sinai land bridge linking Africa to Asia. Stragglers wandered the west along the drying rivers connected to the Atlantic, and, noting that the existence of a red began to spread in their network, white maintained no less than a three kilometer distance at all times. Sleep came in one-hour bursts some nights when the traffickers were active, and those trials tested Nezumi's flexibility to inhuman extremes. All for a baby whose parents left in a dumpster to drown in the downpour.

Nezumi knew why he became weak enough to let the infant into his life, why he named her after a force of nature, why he nearly killed someone for her, but he pretended he didn't.

One day in late February, when Ranko had ten teeth and the pups joined their parents in playtime with the human infant, they reached the coastal "village". It only had five structures: the dock port, a trade hole, a clinic, a lighthouse, and a hostel, but it survived for four years, well past its expiration date. Nine lived in the only building with solar-powered electricity, and all fifteen residents made themselves known to the pair at the circular dinner in the main hall of the hostel. Quite a number of guests stayed in the establishment, traders and smugglers mostly. Right before dinner and after checking in, Nezumi identified three smugglers who owned the modest cargo ship that would leave for the Brazilian Bay first thing in the morning. He spoke with them before dinner, and while he did not care to remember their names, one of them took a liking to Ranko. They established some semblance of a contract for them to mutually benefit from the sudden partnership before being called to dinner.

Nezumi was impressed. With nazar talismans adorning the windows to ward off the "sun apostates" and regular flow of traffic to sustain such a tiny settlement, the people lived well enough to serve food a step above what he cooked in the slums of No.1. Nezumi was impressed by the food quality in such a mild pocket of the wastelands along the coast and how readily the people treated their guests like family.

"You want a lime?" a lanky blue-eyed boy asked in English while holding the cut fruit to Ranko. She stared blankly at the boy, who had to repeat the word a few times for her to understand him.

"Lie... ma..."

"Aww! She almost had it!" said the girl who looked to be the boy's twin sister in their native language.

Ranko clutched the lime with one hand and pointed at the vegetables on her plate with her other. "Green!"

"She knows what she likes," laughed the boy as the toddler shoved the green food in her mouth.

"I wish more kids liked fruits vegetables as much as this little angel!" said the mother of the boy and girl. "She'll grow up never wasting what little grows on this planet anymore, I just know it!"

She and the other women gushed over the infant and laughed at the mess she made, which Nezumi ignored in favor of watching the news on the holographic screen at the center of the table. _Don't act like you know her entire life's story when it barely started._  Rather than get angry, he overheard the smugglers discuss their plans in response to the weather reports. High chances of waterspouts along the equator forced them and other seamen to reassess routes without falling too far behind schedule.

Their discussions and others in the room ceased when a breaking news update ceased regular broadcasts. After twenty years of political bureaucracy, property lawsuits, and strained budgets, the top scientists in all six city states from all fields revealed a completed visual of the state of Earth.

The reporters stammered throughout as their eyes were as glued to the images as their viewers across the world. Before and afters. Like the Great Wall of China from 1954 next to a handful of exhausted pillars severed from each other by punctures in the walls and the surrounding mountains. Like the European cities shaped by the ages of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment - Venice, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Madrid - flattened and scorched to blackened tar with the rest of the continent. Oceans had swallowed the British Isles and the Pacific islands. Major historically beloved rivers like the Nile had completely dried up. So much snow accumulated in the Himalayas that the excess carved interconnected river systems in the Indian subcontinent and Tibetan Plateau. Only Antartica retained semblance of its original self with only a sliver of ice melted from its coasts. 

“...The publication of Project Rediscover along with No.4 and No.3's Aquila-Long Global Ecological Study have vindicated some of the more controversial theories from the 2000 Heinrich Report. Others, such as the emergence of volcanic hotspots in India, Australia, and Siberia require further research, according to experts in plate tectonic theory. They doubt human activity has led to the changes to the lithosphere that allowed regions far from fault lines to have geothermic activity to emerge, and they recommend against human intervention in restoring these regions to their former states.

"However, the head researchers from No.2 believe such drastic measures are necessary for North America. They estimate that without human intervention to alter the chemical composition of the water beneath the ice packs, it will take 400 years for the Canadian-American inland sea to be habitable for life..."

Satellite images appeared on screen: thin strips of land encircling a supermassive inland lake in the shape of a crookneck squash. One of the smugglers shook his head and sighed into his mug of wine. His hairy-armed companion cursed under his breath, and the third man, black hair unnaturally coarse and straw-like, repeated the utterance in agreement to mark it true: "If Kennedy didn't launch that fucking nuke..."

Nezumi did not need pictures from above to see how mankind brutalized the planet, but the birds-eye view of rumored places he had not yet visited disturbed him.  _Everyone had a role to play in this destruction, and it took thirty years for everyone to wake up from the nightmare they perpetuated._  As much as he did not care how anyone took his opinions, Nezumi hoped the three men would not be as politically charged on a small boat with hundreds of kilometers between it and dry land.

_"_... Even with these facts open to the public, speculations of the existence of  'god-like forces' shaping the environment persist in No.1, No.4, and No.6. Of the three, No.1 will continue to investigate the pockets of climate fluctuations from the edge of the Scars of Sahara to the equator..."

The report continued with leaders from the city-states giving their statements. Most were just scripted in the precision of the language and the stiffness of the readings. Such performances were delivered by politician-actors, and Nezumi could give most of them a run for their money. Only two leaders had an ounce of natural, unrehearsed honesty. The blond-born Portuguese-speaking Prime Minister of No.2 openly wept and hugged their city's anthropologist for her contributions to the photographic comparisons. The other -

"We applaud the men and women who devoted a decade of their life to Project Rediscover. They never received enough funding for research of this scope, but they persevered anyway. They have given us the guidance to redraw accurate maps, study regional weather patterns, and rebuild our global infrastructure. They are the heroes we've cried for since the moment we fell into war and despair."

Nezumi's spoon slipped out of his hand and submerged in his bowl of herb and potato broth.

Brown hair. Brown eyes. Unblemished skin.

The voice had matured, gained confidence, but...

"As a university student of ecology, I am eager to use Project Rediscover's findings to guide my fellow committee members to pass data-supported initiatives and to improve life in No.6, while minimizing harm to the environment. We will honor our and our sister cities' scientists by extending an invitation to the second annual Global Unity Summit this November. Politics and science must work together to restore our planet, our home."

The rest of his speech - and his improved vocabulary - blurred into white noise. Nezumi pushed his food aside and did something he forbade himself from doing since the moment he first left. He scoured through articles, statements, publications, pictures, his public GCD records, anything to reject the lifelike projection posing as a politician in the news.

Older images from press conferences and public briefings showed the familiar snow-white hair, red-purple eyes, and pink scar coiling around his neck, but anything recent had the very professional public figure in the report. Brown hair kept trimmed and clean. Corners of his lips pointed upward in a composed, stoic angle. Simple clothes drew attention away from the lack of detail or personality. Brown eyes displayed a dependable but guarded spirit. His public GCD profile listed his appearance as always having brown hair and eyes and no scar to speak of. Online denizens preserved the young man Nezumi had known despite obvious efforts to remove them. The suppression seemed to have started in 2021, which confused Nezumi further.

_Did..._ he _look different then?_  

Against his better nature, he let himself recall May 19, 2022, the second worst day of his life only when he finally remembers, second by second, the fire that destroyed his home with perfect vividness.

 

_A young man leans against a translucent fence encircling a field of innumerable flowers stretching for an acre. His lips curl into a nostalgic smile, says he used to visit to complete his homework. "It'd be nearly dark when mom called me home and said I'll miss dinner. I could have stayed here all night. It was so easy to lose track of time here."_

_He never spoke of this place in their six months together. Why?_

_The young woman places a hand on his shoulder and he trembles at her touch. Who is she? "Why this place though?" she asks._

_He says he doesn't know. "It called to me." His "sixth-magnitude field", where thousands of species of flowers were meticulously preserved from weather and the old government's regime. Too many names and colors to count, not that he ever wanted to try counting them. "I wanted this field to go on forever, beyond what the eye can see."_ _He laughs, "I sound pathetic don't I? I don't mean to sound melancholy."_

_His vocabulary has improved._

_She ignores his bluff and wraps her arms around his waist. "You're allowed to feel sad, Shion."_

_His eyes widen, not expecting her words. Why? Doesn't His Royal Airheadedness already know that?_

_He accepts her hug and buries his face in the crook of her neck. They say no words. The hug lasts for an eternity. She gives it and he accepts, lets it linger. He trusts her. He shares her a piece of his childhood. She comforts him, reminds him of things he had forgotten because... because of..._

_They let go. His smile returns, wider and broader. It's so bright. It hurts to look at him._

_Relieved, happy, loving, she kisses his forehead._

_He glows even brighter, brighter than the sun._ _Brighter than any time in the bunker. It hurts._

_He's happy. He's safe. He's whole, complete, unbroken. Because of her. It hurts so much._

_There is no place for pestilence here. Home is nowhere and no one. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing._

_He never sees the rat that flees._ _"After all, we're just strangers.”_

 

Nezumi bit his lip until it bled to not let the memory overtake him. His brain struggled to string coherent thoughts together as his entire being screamed for the man he twice abandoned. He forced his eyes shut and combed through all the hurt and regret and longing and betrayal to search for _his_  appearance. But the details were too murky and blurry, the colors muted into monochrome nonsense, and he’s in danger of drowning in the feelings returning in gusts. The woman he remembered clearly, the woman who Shion trusted enough to -  _STOP IT! His hair and eyes! What color were they? Why can't I remember?_

Worse, when he tried to step back and view his turmoil more objectively, the boy Nezumi knew bore more resemblance to an idea than a person. Time and forced forgetfulness dulled him into nothing meaningful. He was fading into oblivion, and it ate holes into his memories - good and bad.  _Shion, was I wrong about you? Have I_ always _been wrong about you?_

"Are you alright, sir?"

He opened his eyes and turned to the lime boy, who pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "You look exhausted, and your daughter's calling you."

"Baba!" Ranko wailed and thrashed, signaling to everyone at the table that she's being ignored.

A heavy weight had pooled in his gut, which he released with a deep half-sigh, half-groan. Nezumi cleared his search history and closed is ID bracelet to fetch the toddler. He bowed his head apologetically, thanked them for the food, and left the hall to gossip or change the channel to watch a futbol game in No.2.

Ranko continued to stare at Nezumi long after her crying ceased. His eyes did not meet hers. He hoped she had not begun to have memories that would follow her for the rest of her life. "I'm fine. Don't throw a tantrum like that in public; it's embarrassing."

"Baka!"

"Don't call me stupid!" he nearly shouted in the hall leading to their room. "I might not be your father, but you need to learn how to treat people with respect. And don't be so selfish and clingy!"

"Sad!" She shouted, lips trembling and finger pointing at him. "Sad!"

He stopped walking for a second and released another sigh. With how quickly she's picking up on his moods, this baby would be the death of him, and ignoring her wouldn't make her disappear.

Even if he admited his feelings, what would a toddler do about it? She knew nothing of loss, a phantom pain over a limb someone never thought they had until they tore it off. That limb, so crutial to functioning, can never be replaced or repaired with highly trained surgeons. Ranko knew nothing of love and heartbreak, and, if even Nezumi couldn’t avoid it despite every conscious effort to shield himself from the most egregious wounds he ever suffered, she would rue the day she’d inevitably know it better than her own name.

”Papa, sad?”

Nezumi schooled his face to hide his double take. However many thresholds exist between him and others were crossed by that single word.  _I misheard her. There's no way she said that. She's not old enough to... No. It's not possible._

Her hand, losing bits of unneeded baby fat day by day, gripped his shirt with intent. Whatever time he has left to be rid of her is running out, but exhaustion from traveling for weeks caught up with him. "Let's just get ready for bed, Ranko. Okay?"

She nodded, displaying a healthy quickening and improvement in response time.

Their tiny room had one bed, a dresser, and a bathroom not unlike the apartment in No.1. Resting on the bed with a pile of food white and black smuggled from the kitchen, he mice greeted them. Blue and grey comforted the still-shaken toddler while Nezumi took a quick shower. He emerged with his hair wrapped in a bun and carried the princess for her shower, but then she pointed at the faucet when they entered the bathroom.

"Bath."

Nezumi's eyebrow arched. "Are you sure?" She nodded again. "Did I grab the wrong redheaded baby somewhere in the desert?"

"Bath."

"Today's the day you want to overcome your hydrophobia, huh? Kids sure do grow up fast, don't they?"

"Ran. Bath."

"What's the magic word?"

A raspberry.

"That unbecoming sound is not a word recognized in any spoken language, my lady."

She giggled and blew another raspberry.

They stared at each other, waiting for the other to crack. The adult's only advantage was his perception of time, although his lack of impatience did not translate as such to the infant.

"Bath... Please." 

"As my lady commands." Like a humble servant, Nezumi spared her the humiliation of a smirk at her expense.

He prepared the bath in the tub and eased her in the warm water slowly. She squirmed and shivered the entire time, clearly unused to being surrounded by stagnant liquid. Nezumi respected the girl for facing her understandable, yet irrational fear despite still being unable to say a complete sentence.

Once the ordeal ended, a sudden notion compelled him to leave the room for a few minutes and return with a freshly cut lime on a plate. Ranko's happiness mirrored  _his_ from that memory, and Nezumi scolded himself for unconsciously making that connection. She nibbled on that fruit into the late hours of the night as Nezumi read her the only fitting book for their room overlooking the sparking ocean beneath a first quarter moon.

"Ah,  _The Tempest_. One of the English Bard's most underrated plays. This one has it all: love, revenge, magic, attempted murder, forgiveness, water, and bad weather. Is this acceptable to you, my loyal audience?"

_Cheep!_ The live and robot family of seven huddled on the knapsack on the bedside table. Two of the three young mice had their grandfather's brown fur. _Chirp-chirp-chirp!_  

"Hm-hm? Baba sing?" asked Ranko, curled up to Nezumi's left side and donning in a yellow nightgown a young couple gave when they greeted the guests.

"Yes, kid, there's singing too. And it's one of the few plays Shakespeare penned that has detailed stage directions that I in no way can pull off in a cramped hole in the wall like this. Forgive tonight's muted performance, princess."

She tilted her head to the side.

Nezumi tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. _She needs a cut almost as badly as I do._ "You'll find out soon enough."

No storm brewed but the one that started the play, leaving the cast stranded on an island to wander aimlessly and oblivious to the sorcerer manipulating everyone to his own ends. Acknowledging the current state of the world haunted Nezumi's reading. His audience remained captivated, but some scenes had Nezumi struggle to remain in character. It started as early as Prospero telling Miranda of how they arrived to the island.

"...there they hoist us, to cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh to the winds whose pity, sighing back again, did us but loving wrong.”

"Alack, what trouble was I then to..."

Nezumi lost his voice.

_"What trouble I was then to you._ _" "I am a burden to you." "A deadweight." "A parasite." "Useless."_

He had read some books inside and out multiple times over the years. Nezumi left his hardcover copy of _The Tempest_ in the bunker - likely long destroyed in the Manhunt. This leather-bound, multi-language publication was a parting gift from the fisherman who saved him from the waterspout four years ago. Nezumi had forgotten how many times he read this story and carved every line into his being to recite from heart. Doing so allowed him to survive the most boring, tedious, and endless nights he hadn't experienced since the four years he spent alone. But to memorize the words and to feel the words are day and night of each other.

_"I'm sorry for being a burden to you."_ He could hear his younger self saying it to Gran after scolding him for crying. He could hear Shion saying it after realizing he said something to annoy him beyond the acceptable boundary. He could hear a girl's voice saying it to a half-shell of a man running from his past who is not and never will be her father.

"Baba?"

_Cheep cheep!_

Four eyes - two brown and two red - burned holes into his skin and reset his heart, pounding loudly in his ears. Nezumi shut his parched mouth and grabbed water from the bathroom. When he returned to sit under the covers of the modest fluffy bed, confusion did not leave Ranko's or white's gazes.

"I'm fine. A little tired, but fine. Now, where was I...

"Alack, what trouble was I then to you!” Then Nezumi took a deep breath, and read Prospero's words, hoping they'd relieve whatever overtook him moments ago. "O, a cherubim thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile. Infused with a fortitude from heaven, when I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt, under my burden groan'd; which raised in me an undergoing stomach, to bear up against what should ensue."

A small body whose random need for touch he no longer shied away from snuggled closer to the source of the soothing voice. Her eyes closed gently and a content hum vibrated throughout her curled, vulnerable form. There was no way she understood what those words meant, no way at all.

Any further interruptions were not as egregious, and Nezumi finished the play, missing much of the magic it was meant to have. It was the first reading beneath his standards of acceptable performance, but it was the first reading in which Ranko made no interruptions with babbling, simpering, or laughing. She was simply happy. Still, Nezumi had two weeks onboard a cargo ship bound towards the Carribean-Panama Shelf to perfect his version of this child's namesake. _Pure coincidence_ , Nezumi tried to convince himself.

* * *

It took years for Nezumi to perfect _The Tempest_.

The smugglers made the young man work for every second Ranko and his mice breathed on the ship. He did a little bit of everything, from distinguishing authentic wares from cheap black market knock-offs to updating navigational software the Global Nautical Society released every day in the wake of Project Rediscover. Despite the breadth of knowledge Nezumi consumed on an hourly basis, those were the boring days, even when the youngest of the three men spoke enough Japanese to not require a translator when he bugged Nezumi with useless trivia about extinct species of felines.

The oldest, tallest, and hairiest smuggler had a stick up his ass about Nezumi from the moment he laid eyes on him. All his badmouthed "locker room" insults and taunts did was allow Nezumi to create a variety of new personas and broaden his ability to act and shit-talk, both he badly missed in the wastelands but not enough to endure another probe into his sex life. He had enough one-time flings and multiple encounters to find the egocentric game men played to one-up the other absolutely boring. 

"You're implying no one could be thirsty enough to consider anything more interesting than vanilla when they imagine fucking me," he once ended a conversation when the intrusive ass asked who Ranko's mother was immediately after asking if Nezumi really had as many partners as he implied. That shut the topic down for the rest of the trip, leaving Nezumi disappointed he could never drop hints of his kinkiest ventures. On the other hand, his sacred privacy could live another day unthreatened by nosy idiots.

Everything relating to Ranko made him restless, knowing the only smuggler whose name he bothered to remember, Grant, took a liking to the infant. He was another big guy with a big mouth and limited interests, but he gave Ranko the full tour of the ship and let her roam freely around the deck. He watched her when Nezumi couldn't, and he fell into that role fully recognizing the need was there. Much of his language tamed as days went by like foul language would corrupt the sole female on the ship. And the way he spoke about the girl, how her sense of balance was improving and how her energy was boundless at night, gave Nezumi pause. He watched their interactions closely and noticed how Ranko never cried around Grant, how she followed him around everywhere, and how quickly she learned the songs he taught her. Halfway out on the trip, she stopped asking Nezumi to sing or read her to sleep if he went to bed before she fell asleep.

He had little time to be around her, giving him ample time to reflect on countless instances of the infant's disobedience and sadness that Nezumi combated from multiple angles. No method seemed to be reliable even a fifth of the time. Kuru warned him about the trials of parenting most normal people faced, and he knew was never normal. Seeing him be proven right with Ranko challenging his authority at every turn made Nezumi more tired, more cranky, and more unwilling to put up with her. The few opportunities to return to worlds with a child who gravitated more towards ink and paper than holographic interfaces left Nezumi perpetually surrounded by artificial constructs, carrying him across a 50,000,000-square-kilometer void no land creature could cross without technology severing part of him from nature.

On a night he had time to be with her before bed, he had spent two hours trying to potty train her, resulting in shouting until they both nearly lost their voices.

"There are no more diapers! You can't keep using them forever! Stop wetting the bed and grow up! How hard is it to use a fucking toilet?!"

"Tired! Baka baba!"

"You'll go to bed once I know you used the bathroom! And stop calling me stupid!"

"No!" Ranko screamed, throwing two golfball-sized fists into his shoulder. "No No NO NO!!"

White light blinded his eyes at the same time a splash of boiling water burned his gut. He didn't move, but another him did, young and restless, perpetually ready to slip into the current that would break a pickpocket's wrist. The current that pulled a thug to the ground after a telegraphed punch. The current that guided his knife to shatter past a gunman's long-distance advantage. Pulses beat violently in time to the hits, and he saw was a grown woman and the numerous ways to incapacitate her for getting too fucking close.

"Go away!"

But this wasn't a woman, a criminal, or a soldier. The realization sobered Nezumi, who could not process what the infant just said.

"GO AWAY!!!" Sitting on the floor and staring helplessly at the man, Ranko's voice croaked as it gave out. "GO AWAY, BABA!!!"

Something cold extinguished his anger until Nezumi just felt tired. What more could he say to such a stubborn child? How can he make her listen when being kind and cruel both led to nothing? Nezumi sighed and got up from his kneel. Turning to the bathroom door, he was sick of getting into battles he could never win.

If he heard a faint voice calling for her father, it was only in a dream he never had.

The emergence of budding  _emotions_  had begun to blossom within and break out of the toddler. She's embracing anger, and she used it against him over something pointless. If the little things could set her off, then...  _One night. Just be happy for one night! Babies, no, children are so unappeasable and fickle._

Nezumi found himself at the stern of the ship and gripping the railing until his porcelain fingers lost circulation. Five minutes had passed in seconds. Too many extreme emotions waged a battle in every extremity, and overexertion from everything in life to this moment made bile and acid boil in his gut. Why did the words of a child he had no biological connection to and had known for nine months leave him in this state? Why did he care about her happiness?

_Shit. I'm becoming attached. But if I am already..._  Brown eyes, in awe of the drowned rat breaking into the bedroom, strike down the impregnable walls he had built  -  _Fuck! Not again! Not again!_

A light draft from the east caressed his cheek. "Nezumi..."

_Forget, forget, forget, forget, forget, for-_

He couldn't finish his mantra before leaning forward to expel his dinner to the ocean. Just to spite him, the phantom to his left patted his upper back, right above the spider. _Please,_ please _leave me alone. You're killing me._

He couldn't see _him_ , but he knew _he_ nodded. Accepting. Not questioning.  _He_ always accepted the tempers of a man who did not deserve every ounce of forgiveness granted freely. Why won't _he_ argue, fight back? Did _he_ never once feel -

"I'm sorry."

The wind spirited the presence away. Shrill ringing assaulted Nezumi's left ear. He winced and covered his ear, but the sound did not cease, further twisting his innards. 

After the second round of vomiting passed and his nerves became numb, he dragged himself back into found Grant sitting by the bunk with Ranko tucked in and fast asleep. No hint of her outburst marred her. Nezumi presumed Grant nurtured her back to her normal state of curiosity and bliss like he never could. The one night it would have been good for practice, Nezumi had forgotten  _The_ _Tempest_ and walked past the enviable middle-aged miracle worker without a glance and climbed into the unused bed, away from the creature he considered striking.

"It's normal to get angry with your kids." Grant said in the doorway just in case Nezumi lay in bed with his back to the man and pretended to be asleep. "Matt talked back to me every day. He once said he wished I was never his dad. He never apologized to my face, but he told his mom he regretted it. The next time I'd see him, I'd show him what he said changed nothing about him being my son. Even if he never said 'I'm sorry', his body did. Only someone with no heart couldn't forgive an honest kid like that."

_Shut up._ _You're only making yourself feel better after stealing someone else's -_

"It's no different for you, Rat. Storm never stops talking about her 'baba'. She'll forgive the dumb shit you do, but you gotta forgive yourself too. Give your bond more credit than this."

_You don't know me, asshole._

"Guess it's the same for kids and adults. Such a damn shame." Grant let out a sigh thrice his weight in stifling grief before leaving the room. His words echoed and lingered in the mind of the rat who pretended to close his eyes to reality and not care.

Nezumi had not reflected upon that night until the eve they reached the Amazon Reef. While his crewmates drank the mead they bribed from barrel-pirates they swindled that afternoon, Grant was nowhere to be found. An old book on Nezumi's bed lay open on a page Ranko made a pillow. A slip of paper with sheet music and lyrics penned in Japanese and English fell to the ground when Nezumi investigated. It was a prayer. When a certain man had no way to weigh on his conscience, unwarranted compassion and religion took _his_ place.

Nezumi had forgotten it again until months later, when Ranko attempted to sing a song he did not recognize. They traversed to the furthest tip of South America and watched penguins waddle along the beach beneath an orange sherbet sunset when the toddler hummed big words she could neither recognize nor remember from memory. A stray penguin huddled to her and the three newly mature mice looking over the mound where grey lay after entrusting her children in Ranko's hands. Sitting a meter away in the sand with the book and music sheet on his lap, following along with the girl's attempts to recite a prayer incorrectly credited to a long-dead man who'd weep at the state of the world his God created.

Even along the frozen shores at the southmost tip of Argentina, left untainted by the abrasions of war, a light drizzle amplifying the salty wind's bites, the perfect setting for the play and to send off the descendant of Hamlet and Cravat into the next life, Nezumi had forgotten _The Tempest_.

His willingness to sing followed soon after. The wind carried no spark to set ablaze the notion to reconnect with the nature that gave him his abilities at conception. By neglecting his heritage, he discarded more pieces of himself, leaving little but a head and torso to keep him moving forward with some semblance of dignity. When blue succumbed to fever in the mudlands two weeks outside of No.4 and his fellow mice feared what they thought was his impending death, their pleads for the song to carry his soul to the beyond fell to the earth for Nezumi's feet to crush.

The last figments of dreams were not far behind, and Nezumi simply did what was necessary to live day by day. He barely heard the broken promise whisper curses in his ear. _He_ no longer had features that contradicted Nezumi’s memories. After six and a half years of wandering, now squatting in yet another slum of yet another city state far removed from the grit of nature, Nezumi was unbound but had no will to celebrate his emancipation.

Life had found a way.

For years _The Tempest_  lay forgotten and buried in his knapsack.

* * *

"Papa? Do you act?"

It was far from her first question, but it was her favorite. A child asks questions about the things that matter, the people that matter. The mice encouraged even the silliest and nonsensical questions. Without them, her curiosity would have been stilted, limited, if not dead.

She had no distinct memories of books, but staring at pages filled her soul with relief in the worst of times. Parents of kids her age read them to bed all the time. Hers did too, what felt like long ago. She thinks it every time someone makes a funny face at her name. She feels it every time a sigh slips when he thinks she's out of sight. She imagines it every time his voice changes pitch or tone to mock failed pickpockets or schmooze impressionable shopkeepers. She knows it every time he takes her to daycare in clothes and makeup he never wears at home.

He picks up a book sometimes, but he doesn't _read_. He doesn't _perform_. His voice is restrained and his body stiff, locking something magical and beautiful she knows is there and wants to see.

She doesn't understand why he lies to her, why he hides from her. He used to act. He can still act. He was born able to capture the spirit of another's words and channel it through him. Light and effortless like air. He knows the words better than people but denies he does. "What does a kid know?" he said to her fifteenth "why?".

She hasn't learned the right words yet, but when she does, she won't stop asking until he tells her the truth.

Until that day, she digs in the knapsack abandoned in an empty closet, opens the only book not on his bookshelf, and rests her head on its pages, filled with words she only remembers sung in dreams. Of bees and never-ending summer. Of freedom he craved and no longer sought. Of a flower whose spelled name did not match what he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the novels don't really go into detail about how badly the world was ruined, I had to create something more for world building purposes. One benefit to crafting my own timeline is that I have a cut-off year for literary, historical, and cultural references and name-drops. The other is my being forbidden from referencing music I like, in which 95% of them would never have been made in this universe. It makes me sad to think of a world without fifty or more years of music from everywhere in our reality, but it forces me to try [and fail to do] something different.
> 
> Anywho, going forward perspectives will very likely continue to jump between Nezumi and Ranko as they age. And maybe... actually, forget I said anything. >.<


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't until he left the apartment when Ranko noticed the mice crowded around the necklace, shielding it from the possibility of their master entering the room. Moments like this taught her that her father was far from perfect, and that no one had to tell her the lies adults tell children, making Ranko more wise than she ever asked to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a [not really] fun fact: because the point where the world of No.6 begins to diverge from real history is October 27, 1962, the entire bibliographies of writers like Sir Terry Pratchet, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Douglas Adams never had a chance to exist. I had to get a bit creative with books and quotes, as you can tell.
> 
> It sucks not just because of how much is lost but because a few books I wanted to mention like Richard E Kim's 'Lost Names', published in 1970, don't exist in this version of the world. :(

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

\- 1 Corinthians 13:11

* * *

She could not remember when she first heard the word, but the word held power she couldn't imagine being true outside of fairytales, poems, and songs. The word didn't appear in any books he read to her, and she did not know the kanji.

Did it come from a book her father once read to her? Did it come from a song he once sang her to sleep? Did it not come from her father, but the lips of another - standing before her or in a recording?

It was a pretty word, but it weighed more than the whole world to her father. Like it was forbidden, or so precious that it might as well be forbidden lest he break like a porcelain doll falling onto concrete.

At the very least, she remembered when the word tangled itself within her thoughts. She found the bag her father left in the closet of her bedroom while playing hide and seek with the mice. It rested on a low shelf Mocha tried to reach, but her paw caught on the strings and pulled it with her to a pile of laundry on the floor. Sitting transfixed on the bag and its contents that spilled out on a white dress, Mocha had forgotten the game once Ranko found the six-week-old dark brown-furred mouse.

The book caught the human girl's eye. It pages were full of different languages telling the same tale, and she could imagine her father speaking them all aloud with perfect fluency. Her eyes glazed over the text and traced the pictures of seawater, a young woman tending to a young man, a black demon looming over rotting food and skeletons. But her full attention fell on the page with a wispy creature gently donning noble garb on the sorcerer, not unlike the mother of a classmate helping the father adjust his coat when the hurricane hit No.4 last month. Right beneath it was a passage, and she swore she heard her father:

_"Where the bee sucks, there suck I._  
_In a cowslip’s bell I lie._  
_There I couch when owls do cry._  
_On the bat’s back I do fly_  
_After summer merrily._  
_Merrily, merrily shall I live now_  
_Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."_

"'Blossom'?"

Blossom didn't sound correct. The furigana did not match the sounds she heard from her father. She wondered if he misread it or made a mistake, but this seemed an elementary mistake a man his age couldn't get wrong.

_Cheep!_

Mocha scratched at her arm. Ranko watched the mouse run to what she was focusing on just as deeply if only because it was the same color as the mouse's eyes in the shadow of the closet door. The pendant was made of a jem the size of a large coin and was attached to a leather chain that had withstood time and wear with the endurance of steel. With Mocha on her shoulder, Ranko brought her palm to the window above the fluffy collection of blankets forming the mice's bed to examine the detailed carvings of the necklace pendant: a long-tailed creature wrapped in the pedals of a flower. Its color shifted from violet in the dark to a warm red-purple in the light, but in each environment it twinkled - gently yet brilliantly.

_Chirp, cheep!_

The mechanical black mouse rose his head from his lazy repose in the sun on the windowsill.

Ranko extended her hand to him. "What is this, Ink?"

He chirped again, and his body emitted a low hum as he scanned the pendant. A moment passed before he opened his mouth, and sounds of a conversation played.

"...I really don't know how to thank you enough for stopping that thief. My wife and I have a spare room you can crash in for the night."

"It's not necessary."  _Papa!_ "I can get to No.3 before dark."

"Those ten kilometers is a quick trip on a motorbike across chemical  _swampland_. It's nigh impossible to navigate on foot in a day, and who knows if you slip into a pit. Worse than quicksand if you're traveling alone."

"I've been told the same thing about the Altai Mountains. Your hospitality is kind, but I'm in a hurry."

The man laughed deeply, like everything her father said was a joke. "I thought I'd never see the day when a nomad keeps a schedule!"

Her father sighs.

"I'll tell you what. Let the wife offer you a meal, and I'll make something for you. Anything you want. Life's too short for a handsome young man to not have something frivolous to wear. Or to have a memento, if that's more your thing."

Her father's tone elevates to a pitch often saved for characters with secret motives."Well, I _do_ have this paperweight I found laying around several months back I have no use for. See what you can do with it, and if I don't like it, it's yours."

Then the audio is scrambled. Ink returned the speed back to normal when the topic continued at a latter time.

"What... is this?" Ranko smiled, picturing the profound confusion on her father's face.

"Don't put too much meaning into it. That corundum you found was too pure to make something simple, and there's enough leftover for matching earrings. If you don't want it, it'd make the perfect gift for someone special. I could make enough to not work for a year if I sold -"

"I'll take it."

A pause. "R-Really?"

"Don't put too much meaning into it, old man."

"Ha ha, fair enough. It's yours then." The fumbling and movement suggested they were exchanging something. "So you _are_ wearing them? They suit you too. You're a strange kid. Take care of yourself out there."

The recording ended with the rest of the mouse family huddling around Ranko or Ink. They chattered amongst themselves with Ink interjecting with varying sounds of approval or dismissal. The human girl had seen women gossip amongst themselves similarly on the street, but she knew the mice's world enough to know they were intelligent creatures solving a mystery they must have known for years.

When the once blue-furred Seldon emerged from the mouse bed, everyone turned their attention to him. His grape eyes drifted to the necklace and he pawed at Ranko to bring it down to him. She placed it on the floor and knelt among the mice as the grey mouse sniffed it. Snow and Ink approached him and the three had a conversation Ranko wished she could understand. When they finished, Snow darted out of the room with the speed and focus of a bullet train.

"What's wrong?"

Mocha seemed just as curious but received an earful from her grandfather, and an argument broke out between the mice with Seldon and Ink at the center of it. The tension did not cease when Snow returned with Ranko's and her father's ID bracelets. The latter's bracelet received Ink's focus; the mouse turned it on and broke it open to find... something. Ranko's was already on and the screen had two windows open.

The first was an online dictionary with the word.

The second was a young man bearing the word as his name.

Then the front door opened, making the mice and human jump nearly a foot in the air.

"Fuck! Where did I put it?"

As quickly and silently as he could, Ink reassembled the ID bracelet and gave it to Snow to return to its owner. The mouse chirped to alert the man its presence and to ease his anxiety. The human muttered his gratitude and called out, "Sorry for scaring you, Ran. Forgot my ID. I'll be back in an hour for real this time."

"Okay, papa!" she called back. "Be safe!"

He laughed. "Always am."

It wasn't until he left the apartment when Ranko noticed the mice crowded around the necklace, shielding it from the possibility of their master entering the room. Moments like this taught her that her father was far from perfect, and that no one had to tell her the lies adults tell children, making Ranko more wise than she ever asked to be.

She still didn't know that word was or what it meant, and she continued to play the game of pretend as before, only with the pendant around her neck and beneath her clothes.

* * *

“Why are you still here, Storm? Where’s your mother?”

Ranko looked up from her bandaged legs dangling over the stone fence and at her teacher. The courtyard around her was empty and still of life but the trees swollen with leaves shivering in the lazy breeze of a humid summer. All the other children younger and older than she were picked up by adults who shared their faces, hair, voices, or skin. It felt like forever since the last child left. At least none would see how different she looked from the one who always took her home. ("Apartment," he'd insist, claiming that it is simply that and not "home".)

_What is 'home', papa? Where's your home if it's not here?_

"Mama's working," she said. Her thin fingers - brown, not white - picked at a loose string at hem of her blue dress.

"Again? Do you know what time it is?"

She didn't know how to reply. Her teachers said the same things at this time every single day, and she gave the same non-answer. There was nothing to learn from repetitive encounters with no variation or differences. This teacher, who gave her first aid after a black-haired girl pushed Ranko in the mud to darken her hair, asked more questions she  didn't want to answer. She liked him, but she didn't know how to speak without Ink. He translated anything and everything better than the standard software on her ID bracelet. Three warm balls of fur warmed her stomach, and one itched for the man to leave. Hardly any love was lost when the teachers, caretakers, and kids screamed or swatted at her siblings during show and tell. Her father forbade them from joining her ever since, for all the good that did.

When he finished whatever lecture he cooked up today, he sat next to her and held out a thin book. He smiled when Ranko's eyes fell on a familiar writing system and swelled to the size of apples.

"Did you finish _Memórias da Emília_?" She nodded so quickly that the end of her braids beat her skull like a drum. "What did you think?"

"It's silly."

"Why do you think it's silly?"

Ranko shrugged, unable to find the right words in a brain trying to untangle the interconnected wires that enabled her to understand what her teacher said. She didn't understand half of the characters' names or the setting of Hollywood and why they mattered. Ink translated as best he could, but it required more boring explanations she would never remember five minutes from then. Being exposed to several different languages at home and in public every day exhausted her by the afternoon, and she had to be alone to vocalize her frustrations. Sometimes it's a tantrum; sometimes she screamed. A caretaker heard her singing one day and allowed her to attend her singing classes with the older kids. The number of tantrums decreased, and they said her mother seemed less anxious about Ranko's behavior, something she never could notice at home.

The teacher cleared his throat and captured Ranko's attention again. "How about this book? I had to import a Japanese version from a publishing house in No.3. It may be easier for your mother to read to you."

Right after she slipped the book in her star-patterned bag, her teacher greeted a tall figure in a delicate, loose-fitting green shirt, exposing unblemished lightly tanned skin along the low neckline and arms. No scars meant this could be a night with a story.  _Papa!_  Lighter than air, Ranko glided  across the courtyard into his arms. The grey of his eyes were softer than the finger that stroked her nose. She sneezed shrilly; he sniffed humorously.

After their wordless greeting, Ranko's father let her climb onto his back and addressed her teacher. "Luna pushed her around again?"

The teacher nodded sadly. "We're meeting with her parents to address the issue. Light-borns may be common here, but it doesn't stop kids from noticing something different. It might help if -"

"Hiding who she is and pretending to be 'normal' won't make Ranko strong enough to face the cruelties of the world."

"Just consider it. Changing her appearance will keep the Suns' attention away too," he insisted, folding his arms.

Ranko felt the muscles in her father's neck twitch. He once knocked out a stranger who offered her candy without telegraphing his intentions. He gave nothing away to her teacher either, but Ranko felt that same sudden impulse to react and protect her.  _No one can beat papa_.

He added, "I'm also really concerned about Storm being out here alone for a long time, Eva, and it's not just because she's a beautiful little girl."

Another twitch. "It's 18:53 right now, and this center doesn't close until 20:00. So long as vigilant and dutiful faculty are within the building, I should have no reason to believe a 'beautiful little girl' should be in any danger if I'm not here at an arbitrary time."

"Th-That's... Y-You know that's not what I -"

"Then I'm disappointed such a tongue-tied man is preparing Ranko how to live a good and proper life in this world."

"Why that's -!"

Ranko flinched at the third twitch. She wanted the cropped black hair just covering his ears to lengthen enough to hide her from the raised voices and brewing of an argument. The arms supporting her on his back were capable of gentle warmth today, a rare day Ranko wanted more of.  _Please don't fight, papa..._  

Something happened right after she made her wish, because the teacher quieted like a cornered rabbit staring into the eyes of a wolf. "L-Look, everyone is so focused on the No.6 trials that it's prime time for traffickers and the black market. No matter where you go with her, you need to be more careful and discrete."

"I see nothing careful or discrete in condoning students who force their classmates to 'clean blood' from their hair."

"No teacher here condones bullying. And I was the one who told you about it!"

"Before admitting you agreed with them in principle." The ambiguity of her father's voice evaporated along with much of the effect of his disguise. "If you want to be her parent instead of me, just call Child Services on me and take her. Otherwise, keep your cheap advice to yourself."

"Eva, I didn't mean to offend -"

" _Ikuzo, Ranko._ "

The world spun as her caretaker left her teacher dumbfounded and frustrated by the main entrance. She watched the man grow smaller and smaller into nothing and felt the mice's relief as they untangled themselves from her clothes.

The walk home through the forested town of Uaica with bulletproof glass homes with solar panel roofs was silent, save for the mice exchanging news of their master's and Ranko's day. The girl took in every detail of the familiar path: the heart-shaped knot on a thirty-year-old oak planted on a wealthy expat's property. Gaps between the leaves revealing the lake a kilometer away and the norther edge of the U-shaped canyon where Uaica and its sister towns connected to No.4 sit. Rocks and stones paving the path through the district instead of concrete and metal in the commercial and high-rise districts of the city proper.

Scent of pines and midsummer flowers clung to her father's skin instead of the myriad of foul smells normally contaminating his body. She wondered where they came from and if they came with the bruises and scars plaguing his pearl-white skin. Ranko wanted more days to be with this version of the man carrying her now, simply letting the quiet of nature so nurtured and preserved in this one pocket of the city-state with the lowest population density. He walked with a brisk pace and a purpose of someone uninjured and unbroken. It promised sleep-filled nights without tears and screams. Filled with something warm in her otherwise empty stomach, Ranko began to hum. Snow chirped along for a while until it saw _something_ on its master's face; it stood on its hind legs and placed its paw on his cheek.

"Stop," he said firmly.

Snow and Ranko flinched. The former sat still by the girl's arm and the latter stopped humming. She nuzzled her face against her father's neck and her eye caught a small dot on his left ear. The evening sunlight made the color of the gem look more red than purple.

They returned to their apartment at the edge of town as the last ray of sunlight mixed pink and orange paints across the sky. A dozen two-story buildings alined the street in a rustic style imitating colonial America in the last century. Every tenant had built-in air conditioning, but little other changes were made to modernize the structures. Ranko had no memory of living in No.1, but she believed him when her father claimed this was bigger than the other apartment. Two bedrooms and a bathroom served them well even with the meager number of essential furniture they kept.

They ate their meals on a spotless section of the floor by the door to the balcony facing east. They took turns cleaning it regularly, even if the mice did most of the work when it was Ranko's turn. Further proving it was a lucky day, her father decided to clean the floor after they ate dinner.

Ranko stared at the bowl full of clumps of food swimming in thin brown liquid before her knees. "What's that, papa?"

"It's soup," her father replied after taking a deep sip. Then he snorted when the girl made a face. "It's got all the colors you like, and yet you don't look happy."

"I don't want it."

"Guess you'll starve then."

Her stomach said otherwise. Hearing her body's protests before they were made, Mocha returned from the kitchen with a piece of bread and placed it beside her master when Snow stood between her and the stubborn girl. All the other seven mice and two rats at the party started an argument over which human to side with, except Seldon laying on Ranko's lap and enjoying her company.

Accustomed to the family feuds, her father spoke in a pitch that cut it short. "It's no ordinary soup, you know. Half of our companions agree since the two robots won't shut up about it."

_Chiiiiiit!_  Snow whined in protest. Ink showed off its teeth.

The one mouse all others looked to as a leader erupted in a series of cries for Ink to translate. Its software did not capture animal communication as effectively as human speech, yet it managed a word Ranko did not recognize. Her father did; he blinked and muttered something under his breath she would not understand until later in life.

"Anyway, I can afford to add more than chicken, vegetables, and garlic. Eat up, and you'll have some hallulla for desert."

The girl sat upright and began eating in earnest. Her father laughed at her excitement. It wasn't light and gentle, but hearing a simple rumbling sound that comes easier to children than adults like him made Ranko even happier. Adults don't just get upset over soup, but this soup seemed special; it had a name Ranko didn't understand and it tasted delicious.

He kept the promise when her bowl was empty. When she finished nibbling and sharing her crumbs with the rodents, her father returned with a book in hand after a quick shower. Ranko didn't get a better look at it until he placed it aside to help her dry her thick, shoulder-length hair after her bath. The cover depicted a smoky building and had kanji she did not recognize.

Her father followed her eyes. "It's not the happiest tale for you to hear yet."

"Why, papa?"

"'Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self-preservation is the first law of nature _._ '"

"What does that mean?"

"It means you can read every book ever written and still don't know anything about the world."

Ranko frowned, searching for something in his words and expressions that could help her make sense of this information.

"Forget it." He combed his fingers through her hair, and Ranko leaned into his palm when it rested on her cheek. "What book did you bring home today?"

"May I?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

"Okay!"

Once she was all dry and dressed in her nightgown, she ran to her bag and held up the thin book with two hands and a huge grin. The rodents huddled around her and clamored for the new story to be read. Ranko waited for her father to speak or approach her, but he did neither. Her smile faded when the storm returned.

"Papa?"

She had no better word for it at the time but "a storm". Sayings about being trapped under rainclouds or drowning in sadness appeared often enough in stories and everyday speech, and it never made sense until moments like this. Something heavy lingered over him, casting a shadow that made the most neutral expression dour. It followed him for hours if not days, and Ranko never knew when the clouds will bring light rain or downpour. And on a day she hoped he'd read to her.

"Papa?" she repeated.

The first reaction he had was a flinch and a flash of anger. "Don't call me that. I'm not -"

That brief feeling parted immediately. He realized who he was speaking to and froze, coughing roughly to stop himself from finishing the sentence, but Ranko knew what he was going to say. 

They look nothing alike. They sound nothing alike. She noticed when the girl who pushed her in the mud made fun of the man who raised her. She noticed when strangers and doctors and security asked why she was near this man.

 

_"Who is he? Please come with me, little girl. Your_   _parents must be looking for you."_

_"Black-hairs don't have reds!"_

_"I thought Asians don't have kids with non-Asians. That girl doesn't look Asian at all."_

_"He's not your 'baba'. Your skin's darker than his!"_

_"As you are young, not related by blood, and working with criminals, sir, I suggest leaving this child with adoptive services immediately."_

_"Who'd you steal the pipsqueak from, Rat? Bet that gig set you up for life, huh?"_

 

The faces and feelings of accusation and judgment from those who knew nothing hurt far more than the words. They cut like kitchen knives, leaving superficial scars invisible to the naked eye. Seeing a fraction of that in her father - no, her "caretaker" - was watching a saw amputate a healthy and strong limb.

"I'm sorry," he finally said after a minute of... whatever kept him from speaking. "How about another night, Ranko?"

The book fell to the wood floor with a thud, but tears pounded the ground like asteroids falling from orbit. _No story time. Papa won't read me a story._  "Wh-When?"

"Tomorrow. Just not tonight, okay?"

"No!" Ranko couldn't stop herself from screaming. It had to have been months since he last read to her, and every time she said so he'd promise a story "tomorrow". That "tomorrow" never came. "I want you to read me a story now!"

Her outburst did something, but Ranko couldn't see through her blurry, tear-soaked eyes. Four little bodies climbed her legs and arms, but she did not fight. The mice and rats never did anything like this.

"Ranko. It's not that simple -"

"Liar!" When a white blur reached for her shoulder, she screamed again and stepped back. "Why are you mean?! Why are you mad at me?!"

"I'm not mad at -"

"You are mad! You're my papa, but you get mad at me all the time! You always lie too! If you're not my papa, who are you?!"

Her tantrum devolved into incoherent rage she could not communicate. Unable to take anymore, she ran into her room, slammed the door, threw herself on her bed, and wailed until every bit of the poison brewing inside her was expelled. The mice who followed her made no sound as they curled up with her.

When her throat burned and her pillow was drenched, sleep threatened to bring nightmares of the encounter. She'll see everyone in the world mocking her for having no parents. Even though the black-haired man carried her, fed her, clothed her, and cared for her for as long as she could remember, how was he not her parent? If he wasn't her father, then who was? She had no mother, a bitter pill she swallowed when many of her classmates walked home holding hands with a man and woman on either side. Three had two mothers, one had two fathers, and some had only one mother or father. Why did Ranko's situation have to be any different?

An eternity passed when her door opened. Ranko was too tired to react; sleep turned her eyelids to lead and had nearly claimed her. Her bed shook as someone sat at the foot-end.

A sigh, heavier than humid morning mist after a long night of storms wrecked the land. A crisp flick of fingers turning paper.

"High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt."

His voice bore none of the acid or anger from earlier, but it was not enough to carry Ranko into another world far safer than this one. Still, she listened. His voice captured her attention nonetheless, even if it was weighty and elicited a tender sadness. Or maybe it was the contents of the story, a swallow fulfilling every wish the statue commanded until his last breath.

"But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more. 'Good-bye, dear Prince!' he murmured, 'will you let me kiss your hand?'

"'I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I -'" The graceful melody of his voice cracked and faltered. "'- for I love you.'"

Ranko heard shallow, sharp, breathy sounds she would have never imagined an adult capable of making if she had a normal life. 

"'It is not to Egypt that I'm going... I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?'"

A gentle thud of a book hitting the ground brought a premature end to the tale.

The familiar sound forced Ranko awake. From the corner of her vision she watched her father rock back and forth with his palms covering his eyes. Her chest ached as her father, the center of her world, fell apart at the seams before her. In between soundless sobs, Ranko caught that word she could not find in the book left abandoned in the closet. The word in the dictionary that actually meant a purple flower and remembrance. The word that was also someone's name.

_What is "shion", papa?_ Once she gathered the courage to reach for him, he dried his eyes and left. Ranko opened her mouth to call him and no sound came out.  _Why does "shion" make you sad, papa?_

* * *

Living in one place or knowing someone for a long period of time breeds familiarity and complacency. Nezumi had avoided both foreign concepts for twenty years, and he refused to entertain the question of whether or not it was worth the struggle. Even if he wanted to, a little girl with wavy red hair, free and falling to her elbows, clutched his hand and pulled him through the glass market.

"Come on, papa!" she squealed, enraptured in the energy of people, the land, the sun, the glass, and the whole world outside. "You're so slow! I wanna see everything!"

Three little warm bodies - _Ink_ _, Mocha, and Snow... Life has a shitty sense of humor..._  - huddling together in his pocket to avoid the sun's blinding heat stirred at her voice. They asked their master to inform them when he and the girl found shade so they could enjoy the sights as well.

As it was aptly named, glasswork of various shapes, sizes, and uses adorned the stalls and stores. The streets of flawless thick translucent slabs sat atop the rocky foundation of the cliff overlooking the rugged canyons, dried-up waterfalls, grassy riverbeds, and thin forest patches along the western fertile border of No.4. Only in mid-autumn at dusk the glass buildings, statues, and sale trinkets refract the surreal orange tones of the bruised earth, the thriving tree leaves, and the immortal ball of fire in the sky. Uncreative as it was, none could doubt after viewing such a spectacle why locals call the city-state that accented rather than hid its natural features "Vale do Laranjeiras".

People from across the world filled the market at the peak of Carnival to observe or purchase the simple and intricate glassworks of young and old artists. The man and the girl entered a tent of a wandering artisan. An orb the size of a tennis ball with splashes and sparks of color bursting from the white-hot core of a supernova lured Ranko better than the mention of her favorite snack.

"Wow! Pretty!"

_Cheep, cheep!_  A tiny grey head peaked out of her yellow scarf and shared the human girl's transfixed stare.

Ranko's fingers fidgeted as she resisted the orb's call. Her struggle did not go unnoticed. A hand combed through her hair, and she looked up at the man with wide, nervous eyes. 

"What? Did the Sea Witch steal your tongue, my Little Mermaid?" he asked.

Her lips and cheeks contorted to suppress the giddy, knowing smile. "No, papa. I can talk."

Shaking his head at her denial, he knelt down to her level and eyed the orb. "It's a paperweight. Do you have enough homework that you need one?"

"No. I like it because it's pretty."

"If you want it, just ask. Nobody can read your mind."  _The idiot who told me I'll be able to predict what my kid would say should get thrown down the stairs by his own offspring._

"But you always say no."

_...Do I?_ "Are you saying you can read my mind?"

"N-No... you just always say no."

_Touché._  "Oh, ye of little faith," he said, placing one hand over his heart in mock offense and revealing his bag of coin in another. "I may be no genie, but I cannot say no to a pouting child who asks for nothing when her heart cries for everything."

That managed to lure a giggle out of Ranko. "You're silly today, papa."

"It's Carnival, and we've got enough money to be selfish for a day." Counting the coin in his pouch to see if it could cover the orb's price on the tag, he insisted, "Do you want it, Ranko?"

She nods her head fiercely.

"What's the magic word?"

Raspberry. 

She never outgrew making that disgusting sound, and that forced a small, hearty laugh out of him. He didn't know why, but Nezumi felt like he needed to laugh. Was it because something so small but so stupid had not changed once while the little girl's height, speech, and personality continued to grow? She had fewer obnoxious problems he didn't know how to cope with once she attended school and was forced to learn from others, but she found new ways to frustrate and confuse him. Why did he care about something so small when he's not even her...?

_Keep thinking like that and you'll damage her even more than you already have._

"Please, papa," she said after he caught his breath and calmed down.

Within a minute, he paid for the trinket and the glass ball rested in the palm of Ranko's hands. Nezumi watched Ranko and the two-week old mouse tucked in her scarf to stare into the glistening, colorful explosion captured in glass like a perfectly preserved ancient insect encased in hardened tree sap. When they reentered to the throng, the orb went into its box in the knapsack.

Covered in stitched patches of fabric of various textures and colors, the poor bag saw better days. The blue jean patch at the bottom stood out the most not for what it looks like, but for what he once buried in it, only now to be lost forever. The very thing that shared all of its shades with a fraction of the orb's rainbow. The very thing whose cousin lay exposed to the elements after Nezumi cut his hair to tickle the shell of his ears. One day after Ranko brought home _The Happy Prince_  he woke up with a need for the bag and its contents. He tore the entire apartment apart trying to find it. When he did and after he cleaned up the pandemonium he caused, Nezumi found _The Tempest_ and not the necklace. An unpleasant acid sat in his gut, and he swallowed a large, stubborn lump that formed in his throat upon the birth of his disappointment.

_What were you expecting?_ He chastised himself at the time.  _It probably fell out in the wastelands or on the boat. It's better this way._

Nezumi reminded himself of the sentiment and continued perusing the wares, sights, and sounds of Carnival with Ranko and their mice. It's not what he envisioned for himself, but this is his life. He could have been dealt a worse hand.

"Eve?"

_What the...? Fuck!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Guess who? XD


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had found shade near an abstract statue of a modern artist when he knelt down to meet her at eye level and pulled her close. Every child claims their parents give the best hugs, and Ranko was most definitely normal in that regard. But this hug was the absolute best. The softest, the warmest, the most secure embrace from a man who broke more promises than he kept, who could deny being unhappy until the day he dies, who may never find his voice to sing again, and who will always be her father.

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts - just mere thoughts - are as powerful as electric batteries - as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, _The Secret Garden_

* * *

Sometimes he wished Ranko would ask about the bruises and injuries; they were easier to talk about than why he stopped acting and reading and singing. The answer to all of them is the same, but it hurt less to hear concern about him not always succeeding at dangerous jobs and to chalk it all to bad luck or overconfidence.

Days and months blurred together with every Sun, rival smuggler, or pirate ship he raided on the docks of No.4. For every ten shipments of Mandrax and rusty operation toolkits stollen from the black market, a hundred children and vulnerable adults would be taken in another dark corner of the city. One year after Project Rediscover publicly released their research to the world, No.4 made further adjustments to its budget to pull money from cracking down on human and drug trafficking to its planet revitalization efforts with No.3. As a result, the city became more dangerous to live in, and tensions in the international community began to reemerge.

Nezumi tried to pay mind to politics only when it directly impacted him, but the other smugglers in the operation ring would discuss the news at every opportunity between gigs. Many speculated about how the economy would be impacted once the honeymoon phase of ecologically-friendly markets experiencing a post-war record-breaking boom once word broke out of the sheer number of traffic-brokers and bribers sat in elected positions of the city-states and international organizations. No doubt No.6 was struggling with these issues as well, but thinking about how well the city was doing was an exercise Nezumi continued to avoid like the plague.

But one day, the blond-born former anthropology professor turned from the grainy holographic TV in the center of the a pre-operation dinner circle and eyed him. "Looks like No.2's going to sue No.6 for copyright misuse."

"Speak simple for the monkeys, Wescott," whined a young man wearing nothing but tattoos of obscure logos and occult symbols. He gave her and Nezumi grief at meals because only they used chopsticks when they ate. "How does that affect us?"

The cat boy - who still never left No.4 after his friends helped Nezumi cross the Atlantic - chimed in after tossing stale buns to two others sitting in the circle. "Doesn't that mean they're cracking down even harder? Aren't they already close enough to a drug war?"

"I'm more curious what drug No.6 repurposed for their twisted games. Rumor says it's venom from the endangered platypuses No.2 keeps locked up in their zoological facilities."

Everyone laughed at that. Everyone but Nezumi, whose arm jolted as if struck by lightning.

"Anyway, let's hope the World Health Organization convinces the International Tribunal of Human Rights to tell No.2 to back off," another smuggler agreed. "Who gives a shit who owns what drug that fucks people up? Who cares if there's a drug made from the venom of a stupid-looking animal that I assure you does not have venom? Focus on the real crimes against humanity here. No.6 kept an active military, slaughtered their immigrants, locked up their own for sneezing incorrectly, and 'corrected' citizens in a 'labor camp'. If a war's to break out, it'd be because those fascist isolationists get the justice they deserve for breaking the Babylonian Accord."

Nezumi's stomach flipped. The words were enough to cause the reaction, and unless he wanted his appetite killed completely, he dared not look at his reflection advocating destruction. And the memories teasing their resurface after years of suppression were not helping.

 

_"I want to wreck havoc on No.6 from the inside. I want to watch as the people that have always lived in safety fall into panic, flee in confusion, and lead themselves to destruction. Let those wasps eat at the populous from inside. They don't deserve your blood or any serum you think you're smart enough to make."_

 

"Remember that one of the leaders of the new government exposed the corruption himself," Wescott said, glaring at the four of ten in the room who cheered at the prospect of conflict. "He claims to have survived the correctional facility and witnessed the atrocities firsthand."

The tattooed man laughed. "And last I checked, pigs can fly. He's just an ambitious politician trying to appease the world so we don't nuke his precious city."

"And what about that illiterate intern that follows him around everywhere?" asked another smuggler agreeing with the growing majority against Wescott. "Didn't she do all the legwork and he stole credit from her?"

"I don't care if they're working together or screwing each other. They are wasting their time on redeeming a city-state that has done nothing but show how it doesn't give a shit about human life. They ought to be fighting all the trafficking if they really cared -"

The conversation was interrupted when Nezumi rose to his feet and let his plate of food scatter across the floor. He threw his work knapsack over his shoulder and ignored the confused and curious stares of his contacts.

"We should discuss something else," suggested the cat boy, who remained quiet once the excitement for blood filled the room. "Anyone hear back from our sister group in No.1?"

The tattooed kid disagreed, rising up from his seat and standing in front of Nezumi. "Hell no, don't change the topic! I say we keep going. Never seen the Japanese rat leave one of our fun conversations when it just got started."

"Joacim." A low grumble from the de facto leader rang in the musty air of the warehouse. The shortest of the crew, his muscle mass and years of experience in martial arts gave enough authority to a man with an already intimidating pitch to his voice.

Joacim smirked and itched closer to Nezumi. "What's wrong, Rat? Upset we shittalked your oh-so-perfect home?"

His hands balled into fists tight enough for the nails to cut his palms, mixing blood with sweat. Were the lighting any brighter, all could see how translucent and clammy his skin really was. His stomach churned violently, and the insults boring into his skull disturbed the flashes of white hair laughing and dancing in a snowy playground. Nezumi didn't realize the memory resurfaced until the speculation of _his_ true nature contradicted those very images.

 

_The light engulfs_ him _so easily._ He  _calls his name like it's more sacred than a god. How does_ he  _see something more worthy of attention, respect, adoration, and love than a divine being that may have gave life to the world?_

_"You don't know how much you scare me. I'll never understand you."_

He  _smiles, brushing away his concern like the bangs that fell into his eyes. "I'm just a human being, Nezumi. There's no mystery to that."_

_Purple meeting grey, without any barriers but Nezumi's own insecurities._ _His majesty_ _accepts and submits so easily to every wild temper thrown at_ him _._

_"No human's as naïve as you. How do you do it?"_

He  _laughs and shrugs. "I don't know. It's just who I am."_

 

A light shove startled Nezumi. "Hey, grey-eyes, I'm talking to you!" said Joacim, shoving him again. "Didn't take you for a daydreamer."

"Knock it off, or he or the boss will knock you on your ass," the cat boy warned.

"And miss the moment Mr Above-It-All has a mental episode because he actually loves his precious city? Hell no! This guy -" a finger jabs at Nezumi's sternum, " - is a bleeding heart for that militant shithole. He looks like them, talks like them, and probably fucks like them too. I oughta ask Larissa if this guy's as good as his smug face."

"Leave Lily's girls out of _your_ mental episode, Joacim," spat Wescott. "Let Rat go."

When Nezumi found his voice, he was grateful it retained an even, detached tone. "I wasn't born in No.6, so there is no love for me to hold."

Wicked amusement shimmering in his black eyes, Joacim grabbed Nezumi by the navy superfibre cloth around his neck. "Oh, really? If it's not No.6, then what's got you scared your dick's gonna rot off? Don't like us mocking your home city's leader? You actually think that dopey, two-faced dumbass is being genuine?"

 

_"Anyone who stands at the top of a state will change. If he doesn't change, he'll be destroyed."_

  

It was the same condescension and dismissal of a man the speaker had never met, had never known, had never shared intimate experiences with. Nezumi's left hand twitched as it slowly reached for his pocket. Once he found the right timing, he struck. The movement was so slight, but once Joacim took yet another centimeter closer, his eyes widened at the pointy object aimed straight for his crotch.

"You son of a bitch!"

"I'm no dog. Get out of my way."

"Answer my question first, you smartass."

The blade began to press into the thin fabric, teasing a cut to a physically and socially sensitive part of the body.

" _Move_ ," Nezumi's growl was deep, but smoother than silk.

"Make me, motherfu-"

"Back off, Joacim, and let him leave," ordered the leader, who had read Nezumi's body language enough to see how quickly he'd get the upper hand if he wanted to commit to acting on his emotions. "He doesn't need to tell you anything. Besides, he shouldn't be here too often if the traffickers are moving into his district."

With a groan, Joacim let go of his target and spat in Nezumi's face.

The room erupted into chaos as Nezumi's blade carved a thin slash into Joacim's torso in one fluid, quick motion. He hunched forward and gasped curses in his native Spanish. It took a second to recover, and he lunged forward to punch Nezumi in the face. The men were of similar height, but Nezumi's reflexes were quicker. He spun to dodge the punch, only to roundhouse kick Joacim in the stomach, sending him into a wall plastered in anti-military graffiti left by the pervious squatters of the warehouse.

One of Joacim's friends emerged from Nezumi's blind spot and stuck his shoulder with a rotted block of wood. Another tackled his left side to steal the knife, but Wescott threw a rope around his neck and yanked him away. Three others were about to join until the leader blew into his whistle, sending out a quiet sound frequency that induced crippling aches in humans. Once everyone outside the fight who did not cover their ears in anticipation backed away or collapsed in agony, the leader walked over to Nezumi, rising back to his feet and wiping a bloody cut on his cheek from a punch he missed in the scuffle. 

"Head home for today," he said, looking up to the younger man a head taller than he. "Tomorrow's the start of Carnival, and I bet the kid wants you to herself. Get some rest. We can handle the job without you."

Nezumi nodded. He also gave a look to Wescott and the cat boy, both of whom began to nurse everyone's injuries - except Joacim's, before leaving into the warm orange sunset over the Brazilian Bay.

He arrived at his apartment an hour later to find Ranko and the mice wrapped in the old superfibre cloth on the living room couch. A plate of half-eaten grapes and hallulla lay on the otherwise spotless coffee table. If they had watched TV, the hologram would have shut off ten minutes after recognizing no eyes are focused on the screen. Nezumi moved quietly to clean up the food, only to be greeted by Ink's grey eyes glowing by the kitchen sink faucet.

"Did Larissa walk her home?" he asked, keeping his voice and the running water low.

_Chirp._ It nodded.

"I'll run another job by her next week. The spy probably found enough evidence to expose the bribers hiding in No.1's education bureau. That'll disrupt the trade for a while and help Yako sleep better at night."

_Chit-chit?_ The mouse climbed up Nezumi's arm and pawed at the scab on his cheek.

"Work fight. It's nothing."

_Cheep._

"I don't watch the news, you know that."

The mouse waited for Nezumi to place the clean and dried plate back in the half-empty cupboard with dishes for two before taking a good nibble at its master's earlobe. The human had long become used to the mouse's insubordination, but he resented every new pale scar it made.

"What?!" he hissed, holding out his hand for Ink to stand on its hind legs and lecture at him for whatever crime he committed this time.

Its body made a tiny rumbling sound. Its eyes lit up as a tiny hologram of a person appeared in the palm of Nezumi's hand. The figure wore a russet coat over a sweater that had probably been thrown out after surviving six months in the West Block. He stared forward with his back to the world; a sixteen-year-old boy forever waiting on a hill surrounded by cherry blossoms with a black mouse sitting on his shoulder.

Beneath the figure were characters and numbers from the figure's public GCD records that Nezumi took a double take upon reading:

Shion  
Age: 25  
Born: 2001-09-07  
Citizenship: No.6  
Occupation: Vice President of the People's Committee of Baraen  
Blood Type: AB

_Twenty-five?!_

Ink read his shock and displayed today's date beside the figure to drive the point home: March 4, 2027.

The mouse leapt to the counter before Nezumi's hand fell back to his side. His legs lost enough sensation to turn into jelly and send him back to lean against the wall between the kitchen and the door to his bedroom to support himself from collapsing.

_Nine years?! How has it been nine years?_

Realization continued to strike him as his eyes traced over the evidence of time's passage: Ranko, Ink's newly installed eyes among dozens of additional upgrades to its hardware, the family of rodents that fluctuated in size but remained a constant, the pile of unread books abandoned in the corner of the living room collecting dust, permanent and worn furniture of a lived-in residence, the sheer distance of Uaica from Lost Town - at least 15,000 kilometers.

_Forget, forget, forget, forget, forget -_

Then the years of memories between that spring morning to the present cascaded upon Nezumi. The information was too much and too overwhelming. His legs gave out and he tumbled to the floor. He lost track of the rate of the incessant pounding in his skull and his chest. Stars blurred his vision, and he felt himself drowning in the ocean of bodies and fire and black tar.

_I can't take this anymore. Rip out my heart and crush it into the dirt. Set my body on fire so it can't be healed. Let the wind take my soul away. Just make this stop._

_I don't want to live anymore._

A second later, it was nine in the morning.

Nezumi awoke half-dressed in his bed with a slight pressure against his temple and an empty bottle of alcohol in the middle of his bedroom. A thin layer of grime contaminated his hand and crept under his fingernails.

He didn't remember how he got there.

He pieced together whatever hints lay about the room and on his body as he cleaned himself up. The bottle of alcohol wasn't his, so someone came over at some point during the night. The lack of scratches and bite marks, as well as him wearing underwear and sweatpants, strongly suggested he didn't have sex with whoever visited. A bottle of aspirin and a glass of water at his bedside table meant the guest nursed him from... from something that bothered him.

The identity of the visitor became known when he heard a woman laughing with Ranko.

"You are right. They're just like people once you watch them long enough."  _Larissa._

"I know! Papa doesn't think so, but he talks to them all the time!"

"Well, we'll keep his secret soft side to ourselves, how's that?"

" _Hai, titia_!"

The woman's laughter ended briefly when Nezumi emerged from his room, fully dressed. Larissa gave him a small smile, which morphed into a stern line when Ranko leapt into the man's arms to wish him a good morning. Nezumi brushed her nose, resulting in the adorable little sneeze the girl still could not condition herself to stop.

_You deserve better than me._ "Did you eat yet, kid?"

Ranko nodded. " _Obasan_ made us  _pão de queijo_! They're really good! Have some, papa!"

"I will if you didn't eat all of them."

"I didn't! Seldon made me, Mocha, and Murasaki save some for you."

Nezumi ruffled her hair and made his way to the counter with the cheese buns. His guest had the decency to let him eat a bun and wait for Ranko to become absorbed in the TV show in the living room before bringing up the topic. Larissa leaned against the counter on her left, giving her right and only arm enough room to take any drastic action against the helpless man before her.

"How much do you remember?"

He pointed at the cut on his cheek that had mostly healed, as if by magic. "I left work early after a fight broke out. That's all that's really important to know about, right?"

Larissa did not look the slightest bit amused. "I don't know, is it?"

"My sincerest apologies if you're mad I called you for a lay and I didn't deliver. It sometimes happens when a man drinks too much. Although if things did work out, we still couldn't do much with a kid around, even if she's asleep -"

"Your white rat called me, Nezumi." That forced the man to look away from his second bun and to the judgment of someone who knew too much about him. And could pronounce his name well enough to disarm him every time. "Let's stop beating around the bush. Stop all of this self-flagellation and go back to No.6 before you kill yourself."

It was his turn to frown. "You should already know there's nothing for me in that city."

"Nothing but the man who broke your heart so bad that you still say his name after you finish." She ignored the heated glare he threw, probably only outclassed by the sheer amount of hot blood rushing to his face. "If I were you, I'd go back to the theater and relearn a few tricks, because your ability to bullshit your way out of things has deteriorated almost as quickly and badly as your health."

"Did you perform a medical test on me while I was asleep and send it to Yako for her to make you report her prognosis?"

"Stop being a cheeky asshole for five seconds and listen to reason." Larissa hissed, fitting the snake broach she normally wore when she greeted clients in her Madam's establishment. "Forcing yourself to forget what happened is not an alternative to getting over your personal baggage. If you're not going to be a responsible human being for yourself, do it for Ranko. She needs you for more than keeping traffickers more than a mile away from her."

Nezumi walked past her and poured a glass of orange juice from the fridge. The door obscured his face from her for a few seconds, and it was enough to school himself from any subconscious acknowledgement of his refusal to face what he had locked away for years.

"Well, good thing today is the start of Carnival!" he said loud enough for Ranko to hear. "I'd hate for Ranko to miss out on the festivities like Cinderella almost missed the ball!"

Larissa saw through his trick, but could not protest when the red-haired girl gave Nezumi the starry-eyed look of a daughter utterly attached to her father. She watched him give the girl another hug, and the unreadable stoic face he wore melted into a gentle expression bringing out the color and life that he buried and which have been fading day by day since the moment he first became her client.

Their conversation had to be placed on hold thanks to Ranko's boundless energy and excitement to go out "right now!" Larissa left in the opposite direction as Nezumi and Ranko, but she hoped - much to her own shame - that something would finally make that man see that everyone knew he had lost whatever war he had fought for years, and that going on any further would be a waste of a life full of color and talent.

* * *

"Eve?"

A voice from an unknown location made her father start. He pulled Ranko close and led her through the crowd from what she assumed was away from the voice. The further into the crowd they moved, the more people clustered around them, confusing her sense of direction. The vibrations of incessant noise shook Ranko's organs, but she could still distinguish the voice over the choir of senseless chatter.

" _Oi,_ Eve!" Someone else - a man - spoke Japanese _here_? "Where are you, you heartless bastard?!"

Her father's lips spat something foul Ranko could not hear.  _Eve? Like 'Eva' and 'Hauwa'? What's happening, papa?_

"I know you're here somewhere! One of your contacts tipped me off! Show yourself!!"

The voice eventually grew quieter and quieter as her father led them into an obscure alley. The sun rarely shined in streets and paths with stone pavement and concrete walls, which fit her father oddly until she learnt the meaning of his name. It still wasn't a place she wanted her father to be, but it worked well when on the run from someone who had known him.

Her father slowed down once they took a corner into a side street marking the border of the financial district of Novas Minas with the cultural district they just fled. Ranko's arm hurt from all the sharp turns her father forced her along, but she kept silent.

He let out another curse as Snow chided him for treading too close to territory she was told was always dangerous. Held before her was the cream shawl made of the same fabric as her black hole-ridden blanket and her father's navy cloth he pulled from the knapsack. "Cover your hair, Ran. We'll only be here for a few minutes until we get to the tram."

Once she did just that, they moved into the open and skirted around the elaborate shops and performers across the statue plaza. A replica of the founder of No.4 stood as the centerpiece of a one hundred square-foot water fountain. This area is large enough and high rises are far away enough that the sun always shines upon the plaza and the highly-polished gold of statues and yellow accents adorning faux-classical Spanish and modern Brazilian architecture.

Ranko stole a look every few seconds to marvel at the sights, but she knew to never lose sight of her father, whose pale skin and black hair were maladapted to this tropical environment. The sunlight from the cloudless sky seemed to bring out a milky green in his skin, and his hand was slick in sweat from above normal temperatures for a day in March.

"Papa?"

He grunted, stealing a quick glance her way before nearly colliding into a couple leaving a crowd watching a street band and performance group playing samba nova.

"Why are we running?"

"Ask me when we get to the tram," he said between breaths. _Is he thirsty?_ "I'll explain then."

She recognized that tone in the promises of bedtime stories and songs to be told on a tomorrow that never came. Were adults so prone to dismiss the wishes of children, even if the child is someone they are raising? She wanted to call him a liar, that he'd never tell her why he's on the run, why he has no home, why there never is a tomorrow, why he'll never tell her if "shion" is a flower or a person.

But today had been a good day before now. He indulged in a frivolous item she'd never know the use for. He smiled like he hadn't in a long time, and - without fail - he has always protected her from storms, scary men, and any dangers she couldn't yet see.

Above all, she loved her father, and she wanted to trust him. "Do you promise, papa?"

They had found shade near an abstract statue of a modern artist when he knelt down to meet her at eye level and pulled her close. Every child claims their parents give the best hugs, and Ranko was most definitely normal in that regard. But this hug was the absolute best. The softest, the warmest, the most secure embrace from a man who broke more promises than he kept, who could deny being unhappy until the day he dies, who may never find his voice to sing again, and who will always be her father.

He pulled away and held her face with both hands, slender like a mother's but callused like a father's. "I promise, Ranko," her father spoke with a hoarse voice full of conviction and certainty that made a gentle warmth bloom in her heart. "I mean it this time. I'll tell you everything, _everything_. No matter what happens, you'll know why I'm traveled this far, how I found you, who -"

His voice faded into a chorus of distressed vocalizations from the mice, and his head wavered forward to touch her forehead.

"Papa?"

He couldn't make any response but pained gasps, and his hands slid from her cheeks to her shoulders. Something heavy pulled him towards her and down, and he trembled as he bathed in layers of sweat. "...eave me... Ranko, run..."

"P-Papa?! What's wrong?" Her eyes began to fill with tears.

"...run..."

He slumped to Ranko's right side, and she tired to catch him to no avail. They fell onto the white cobblestone street of the plaza that burned her legs from being exposed to the sun for hours. Ranko's arms wrapped around her father's neck to protect his face from the same heat, and she looked around in abject terror of the strangers walking around and past them as if they didn't exist. Mocha and Ink huddled around the girl's neck to console her crying; Murasaki, even younger than Mocha, curled itself along the twitching jugular vein of Ranko's unconscious father.

She tried to call for help, but no sound came out, no matter how widely her mouth opened. Her throat constricted from her fear, her sobs, her absolute panic at the thought something happened to her father.

_Wake up, papa! What's happening, papa?! Where are we?! Papa!_

"Are you alright, little girl?"

An older woman with a forlorn expression left her husband for a moment to reach out to the girl. Ranko didn't know how to respond as the voices of her father echoed alongside the pounding heartbeat in her ears.

 

_"Don't trust anyone who isn't me, Ran. If they seem friendly, it's a lie."_

_"If they're wearing yellow, run. If they have the sun anywhere on their body, run even faster. They are never nice people."_

_"If anything should happen to me, run and never look back. Don't let anyone stop you, not even me. You have to live, no matter what happens."_

 

"What happened, my dear?" the woman asked again, moving to pat Ranko on the head.

She completely froze. She prayed her hand wouldn't move the shawl to reveal the red beacon of light her hair became under a perfect sunny day. Everything her father taught her was wasted. The gold earrings she wore look like suns through the filter of tears blurring her vision.

The world spun around her and sounds and colors mixed in the raging heat of a sun that had no pity for the inhabitants of a scarred planet, let alone a little girl and her father, a rat and the “white demon of No.1”.

_Wake up, papa. Please wake up. I'm scared. I can't move. I can't leave you, papa!_

"What the hell?!"

A stranger speaking Japanese broke through the busy street to approach Ranko, startling her, the old woman, and the old woman's husband. "Geez, even after all these years, he still has a flair for the dramatic! Who does that bastard think he is?!"

"I-I'm sorry, I don't understand you," the old woman said in Portuguese. "Do you know this girl?"

The man turned from Ranko's unconscious father to the woman. His eyes widened for a moment, but he replied in a much calmer tone, "I don't know the girl, but I do know the pathetic man who fainted on top of her. I'll take it from here."

The woman stared in confusion but nodded as if she understood what he said. She gave one last glance at Ranko before her husband ushered her back into their own worlds.

Letting out a sigh, the man tried to pull her father from Ranko's arms, but she - finally regaining her voice - screamed. His tie bore a yellow sun. "No! Go away! Let go!"

"Shush, kid, I'm trying to help you!" he hissed, keeping his hands at a distance.

"Don't take papa! Leave him alone!"

The man's eyes widened, and his jaw fell wide open. "'Papa'? Eve is - ?"

_Cheep, cheep, cheep!_  Ink darted down the man's shoulder, nearly making him scream in abject terror. The mouse jumped onto its master's chest and projected a hologram for Ranko to see. It was the man before them but younger, and with more auburn to his hair than the patches of grey that showed now. The image of him was overweight with a suit he pieced together from a junkyard rather than a store.

A low sound emitted from Ink and it played a recording of a past conversation:

"You want me to cooperate with you?!" the recording of the man shouted. "And what do I get out of this?!"

"A ton of cash? I thought you loved money, old man."

"Get your feet off my table! Your lack of basic manners aside, what makes you think I'm gonna believe what some third-rate, fraud of an actor tells me?"

"Would you be more interested if it involved Shion?"

"SHION?! What did you get him wrapped up in, Eve?!"

"Nothing. Shion only sowed the seeds that have already been growing in my yard. Agree to help me, and I'll tell you the deal."

_Papa..._ Ranko choked on a sob as the recording ended. Her arms tightened around her father and she buried her face in his hair. "W-Wake up, papa..."

"Geez," the man sighed. "Look, kid, I'm sorry for scaring you. Like that... mouse showed, I know Ev- your father. Why I'm here doesn't matter right now since he's not doing well. Is your mother home?"

Ranko jumped as her eyes rose up to the man. The sudden movement slid her shawl back slightly to reveal some of her red locks. Ink made a sound, which cause the man to jump as well, but he looked long enough to see its head shake fiercely.

"So it's just him? Great. Since you nearly gave me a heart attack trying to get me over here, is there someone you can call so the kid's not alone with Eve?"

_Chit!_  Snow scampered away from them to fulfill the very request. The rest of the mice nestled against Ranko to calm her down and assure her that the man was not dangerous at all. It took another minute, but the man waited for Ranko until she spoke.

"Wh-Who are you?"

"I'm Rikiga... an old business partner of Eve's," he said lamely. Ranko didn't understand him, but she recognized some kind of fondness for her father when he looked at him. "I'll carry him home if you and the mice lead the way."

Ranko did not loosen her hold of her father.

"Look, I doubt he told you anything about me, but I promise I won't do anything to hurt you or your father. You're a good kid, and I'd hate to have a real monster take you away. Shion will kill me if anything happened to Eve, and that extends to his daughter."

Her legs were on fire, and her father looked no more ready to awake than ever. The sun symbol on this Rikiga's tie kept the fear in her blood alive, but with no one else willing to help, the mice expressing trust in him, and him seeming to know about "Shion", there was no other choice.

"O-Okay..." she mumbled.

After having enough courage to let go of her lifeline, Ranko watched Rikiga lift her father onto his back. Her father, a porcelain doll melting like an ice comet in the violent rays of a cosmic sun, never looked so childlike and frail. As they traversed less busy streets to avoid attention, Ink led the way home while Ranko stayed right next to Rikiga so her eyes never left her father. Reading the obvious her anxiety on her face, the man gave the girl the navy superfibre cloth, which and and its owner's scent wrapped the girl in a cocoon. The shady walk through Uaica spared the mice, Rikiga, and Ranko from heatstroke, but the remaining five minutes of the trek dragged on for an eternity.

It all ended when her one-armed "auntie" stood watch at the stairs leading to the second-floor apartment. Ranko lost all composure as she ran into Larissa and clung to her skirt like it was the only thing keeping her alive, only breaking apart to guide Rikiga to lay Ranko's father in his bed. The woman sat with Ranko on the couch and held her like she was her daughter.

"He'll wake up, _ratinha_ ," she whispered soothingly in the child's ear. "A doctor is on the way, and Kuru will be here first thing in the morning. Nezumi's in good hands."

Ranko could only nod and wait to believe what was to be true in the end. _Who is that man? Who's Shion? I'm scared, papa..._


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A song could never purify him. It would only take him away from the messes he created and promises he broke. He had so many failures, too many to count, but he tried anyway in a desperation to break the spell that overpowered him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been riding an all-time high creative wave lately, pushing through drafts of a story I've wanted to write since I was twelve, getting my three-part review of 'Detroit: Become Human' started on my blog, and updating this little fic of mine. It's crazy how much I want to write with so few hours in the day!
> 
> Then my computer crashed. And the AO3 servers went down. And my comp crashed again. And I lost three pages of content.
> 
> FML.
> 
> Well, I recalled as much as I could from memory, and this chapter needed a lot of edits anyway. Hope you enjoy!

“Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

\- Ray Bradbury,  _Fahrenheit 451_

* * *

Ranko had never known a time when more than two strangers would enter their home in a single day. Sometimes a business partner helping her father home after a job left him injured and unable to return home alone, and other times Larissa walked Ranko and a friend from daycare who wasn't scared of the mice. Their presences reminded the girl how empty home really was with simple furniture and clutter of practical and impersonal value. Only her room - books, blankets, paper, and mice-beds scattered everywhere - provided warmth, and her father did nothing to purge her room of personality, only to keep it under control so he could find her in the morning if she overslept.

Within twenty hours there had been five strangers, and Ranko never felt so lonely before in the apartment.

The first doctor had brought his assistant to help administer tests Ranko had never heard of or knew what they did. She did not like him when he entered her father's room and scowled at the "vermin" encircling their master. She and her siblings did not move when the doctor commanded her to leave. He refused to explain why, like her fearing leaving her father with a stranger was unreasonable. It took Larissa yelling at the man in Portuguese and Rikiga standing between the doctor and Ranko so the mice don't launch an attack as they left the room. 

Even as she sat on her bed, clutching  _The Tempest_ and the necklace to warm her and erase the gooseflesh, the arguments did not cease. In fact they worsened when an ungodly shriek disturbed everyone, including Sunny - a mellow brown rat fond of the endangered sunflower seeds that thrived in the neighborhood - from her nearly supernatural deep sleep. A string of foul words her father uttered under his breath told Ranko who was scared, and Ink confirmed it later when he hid under Ranko's pillow, leaving a light trail of blood his foster siblings tried to clean up.

What could pass as normalcy returned an hour after the visit ended. After reassuring Ranko that the only bad thing that happened was Rikiga nearly fainting from the assault instigated by an affronted mouse to a crass assistant insulting the patient, Larissa prepared dinner with some motivational support from the mice. Only Seldon and Snow stayed tucked in Ranko's hair as she sat beside her father with _The Tempest_ on her lap. He did not stir, but some color was restored to his face. She wanted to believe her poor attempts at reading the story with words she had heard before but cannot pronounce helped a little.

When she cleared her throat, Rikiga gave her a cup of water from the desk covered in mountains of unused computer parts. He and Larissa took turns using the chair whenever it was either of their turns to take watch. "You're a brave kid."

"Th-Thank you, sir." Ranko still didn't know who he really was, but it didn't excuse her from being polite, given how much he's helped.

Rikiga noticed the girl shrinking away from him while having some part of her touching her father. In the two times they exchanged words since the scene in the city, Ranko's eyes had never left his tie. "I'm not one of the Suns. My job as a journalist sometimes makes me find the truth from shady characters."

"You wanna stop the bad guys? Like papa?"

_Cheep, cheep._  Seldon's head poked from out of her hair and sniffed the shell of her ear.

The lack of screaming meant Rikiga did not see the critter. "Yep, I pretend to be a bad guy so I can help stop them from hurting good people."

"Are you and papa and auntie bad working with bad people?"

She had asked her father once and did not understand his answer. He had returned home with a black eye and ordered the mice to not let her help get ice. But something told Ranko she had to do something, and her father stopped arguing when she begged him to let her hold the bag of ice for him. Shallow cuts marred his hands with deft and delicate spider's legs for fingers. He did not complain or show it, but everything as fine as the gentle air of the apartment made his injuries hurt. Ranko recalled the fragments of the fuzzy answer, leaving her only certain that doing the right thing is very hard and that sometimes the world will never thank you.

The saddened look Rikiga gave told her that would be his answer as well. "I wish I knew, kid. This world makes no damn sense, but we do best we can. I know it's not what you wanna hear, but you're gonna be alright. Your father's got you reading books adults my age don't understand." He sighed and pulled at his hair, turning his conversation to no one in particular. "This guy looks after two angels and somehow doesn't spread whatever demon virus he's got. It's a mystery for the ages, I tell you."

Most people who insult her father would end up on the floor with bloody bites from her and her siblings. They didn't know him and never cared to try, defying the values of giving everyone chances to prove the content of their character. She had few friends for exposing such hypocrisy in her peers and in adults, and, once this incident is all over, Ranko could only count the two adults here worthy of the word. Yet in spite of him knowing her father well enough to help him, Rikiga had cursed her father countless times with no regret.

"Whatever this is, you better get over it and wake up, Eve," Rikiga growled at the sleeping younger man. Blood rushed to his head and made the grey of his hair more obvious. "I don't know when the hell you forgot, but you're not one of those damsels you used to play who needs saving. You're a rat. No, a cunning fox who uses every dirty trick in and out of the books to stay alive. I'm not going back to No.6 to tell Shion and Karan you gave up life like a coward. And if they don't mean a damn thing to you anymore, then wake up for your kid! She's reading you stories full of words she can't pronounce yet for god's sake! Who's gonna teach her how to devour and love books like you? Does she even know about that bunker and all those books you bought and stole from the 'illiterate plebeians'? Did you tell her about Shion, or do you throw away everything that isn't useful to you in the moment?

"What the hell happened to you?" His voice cracked, and he wiped his eyes with an old brown handkerchief. "Look what you did, making me cry over your selfish pathetic ass. Damn it!"

Eyes glued to her book Ranko had forgotten where she had left off. Just hearing the anger and worry was enough to make her want to cry with him. Even if she and Larissa decide to trust him, Rikiga didn't need to tell her anything about his history with her father; he expressed himself clearly enough that he didn't have to. Like her, Rikiga bore no resemblance to her father, and yet he traveled far and wide looking for him. Ranko wondered who he was, and what stirred some of the feelings in him that she shared. He was fond of her father just as he was fond of Shion, whose name was spoken enough time for him to manifest in this room. She wanted magic to be real so Shion could appear and she could meet him. Whether she would like or hate him, Ranko had so many questions about his character and about his relationship with her father.

She wondered if her father never spoke of Shion because Shion meant more to him than words could ever convey. She wondered if that's what love is and how it felt to love and be loved so much that words are impossible.

"Are you sure it's just you two?" Rikiga had asked when his sobs ceased and his voice became even. "You don't have a mom?"

Ranko shook her head, a loose thread of hair slipped out of the braid. She thought Larissa told him their story, but as his expression did not change, he just wanted to confirm it again. Or filling the dead silence with conversation was more bearable than the agony of drawn-out waiting.

"Damn it, Eve..." Something sounded harsh and resembled a laugh. "All this effort and yet you still think you're invincible. Being a cocky crook doesn't pay anywhere near as good when you're a parent."

"You act like he didn't know that. Nezumi did the best he could, given the contacts he's kept over the years."

Neither Ranko nor Rikiga heard Larissa open the door and peak her head in. She shot the man a look she had often used when her father slipped a swear around Ranko. The apron protected her summer dress from what looked to be thick, clumpy blood that smelled of spices and cooked beef. _Tomato sauce_ she once corrected, but Ranko could not separate reality from the subconscious imprint. 

"I made a little bit of everything: curry rice, empanadas, and fruit salad. Try to eat for your papa's sake, Ranko. There's _brigadeiro_  for dessert and _hallulla_ if you do."

It took five minutes to convince her to sit at the small dinner table, and no one was above screaming over her when Ranko raised her voice. Everyone was too tired to be at their best, and no adult here knew what being a parent actually entailed, a fact that made them more frustrated with the situation.

Due to her father's unimproved condition and language barriers Ink was forbidden to break lest Rikiga suffer another panic attack, the three had dinner in near-silence. The few times they asked to pass something over or to compliment the food, Ranko had to translate between Japanese and Portuguese, which provided some intellectual challenge she had not received due to skipping daycare. Sleeping arrangements were made with few words as well. Rikiga forbade Larissa from taking the couch - "I can deal with the least comfortable furniture in any house for a night," he had insisted - leaving her with Ranko's twin-sized bed as the girl adopted to sleep beside her father for the first time since she was three years old. His warmth would have been more potent if he held her, so she slipped under his arm and pretended all was right in the world.

The morning greeted them with long overdue heavy rainfall sending the temperatures down by five Celsius, something the second doctor spat when she arrived completely soaked and pants stained in mud. Her mouth let bad language flow like Rikiga's and her father's, but in a language Ink translated with ease he did not have when untangling Portuguese.

She gave Ranko a soft smile that only matched the indigo fabric wrapped around her head and the familiar stroke to Snow and Ink's heads. Her tone, posture, and durable suitcase projected purpose and focus, both lacking from the other adults. "Had your company not cut the neck of the bottle, I wouldn't have made it so soon." She told Larissa while accepting a heavy, jingling purse.

"Sometimes unrelated things are meant to happen for a reason. I can't thank you enough for coming, Kuru."

"The _fa'r_  owes me a considerable amount since the day he stormed into my office in jibaab. Ah, his attempt to blend in while in a panic was almost adorable." Her short, shrill laugh grated on the ears. "But it's in everyone's best interest that a lively character like him lives to see another day."

"Hey, don't be casual about this in front of his daughter," spat Rikiga, giving her a cup of water he initially offered, only to regret.

Humor vanished from her face on the flip of a coin. "It may not look it after being cooped up on a 9-hour flight, but I am not taking this lightly. Even if Nezumi owes me nothing, I'd still be here."

"Okay, okay. Sorry to piss you off, miss. Did you read what the other doc said?"

"Before I tossed it in the bin, yes. Consider my second opinion sacrosanct," Kuru finished her drink in ten seconds, placed the cup by the sink, and let Ranko take her to the patient. "Time to prove the hoofbeats are from a horse, not a zebra."

The doctor's confidence stabilized the mood of the apartment despite her getting under Rikiga's skin. She performed the same tasks as the first doctor, but Kuru consulted old files she kept to rule out half of the theories and assumptions made in the first report. All Ranko knew was the woman did not declare something she did not know without reviewing all information available.

After being unable to leave her father's side except to eat or use the bathroom with the others present, Kuru best honored what the home was for Ranko and her father. Unlike the doctor, she let the girl watch her perform the tests and explained what she was doing. Unlike the assistant, she encouraged the mice and rats to lay on or close to their master's body. Unlike Rikiga, she filled in the gaps missing in the life of Ranko's father from when they met to the day he left No.1. Unlike Larissa, she gave the girl the quiet to think or space to cry. Kuru simply told the truth and did not waste words, and Ranko sought as many answers to questions she locked in her head and heart. 

One scared her, but she hoped the woman was as good as she seemed. "How did papa find me?"

Kuru removed her gloves and reached for a squishy bag and pump she wrapped around her father's arm. Her lips stretched into a smile thinner and longer than the vines and words etched into her skin, all had stories Kuru shared as well. "He found you on a day not unlike this." She pointed to the window, fogged over and other visible past the railing of the balcony. "On his way home from work at a small theater, he heard you crying in an empty alley. He took you in before the rain washed you away."

A large hand twisted her stomach. "'Washed away'?"

"Sadly, yes. Without him you wouldn't have survived. Rainy seasons in No.1 can be brutal."

Ranko's lips trembled as she pondered those words. From the folds of her oversized sweater to the head of the bed, the mice and rats sang notes of distress. It took gentle caresses and hugs to calm some of them down, especially Mocha, who had not yet known the nature of death.

"Why?"

"Why'd he save you? I think Nezumi pretends to not know why." After checking his blood pressure, Kuru took out a light to see if his pupils responded. "Something compelled him to do it. I don't know if it's a voice, a memory, or a thought, but it has kept him kind in a world full of anger, death, and sadness."

Unable to find a response to the woman's admitted uncertainty, Ranko caught a brief flash of her father's irises. Their grey was warmer than the metal tools in Kuru's bag but just as dull. Without them alive and tracking everything in the environment, Ranko can only guess how the color and intensity could change, a realization that startled her. If eyes were the window to the soul, then his were murky, transient, and impossible. She couldn't remember exactly what his eyes looked like when he gazed upon her, but they were different from when he saw anyone else? Did his eyes soften when he found her, and if so, how much so? Did it spell anger or love? Does he look at her like a father would at his child?

 

_"Don't call me that. I'm not your father."_

 

" _O-Obasan_?"

The woman pulled away from her patient and coughed into her sleeve. Her eyes watered as she restrained her laughter. "Oh no, call me Kuru, Ranko. I'll even take the rat's nickname over that! I'm not that old!"

Shoulder stiff and face crimson, Ranko mumbled, "Y-Yako, will I ever meet my real parents?"

Kuru's face contorted. She stared at her bracelet monitor to not direct the intense flash in her eyes at the girl and her innocent question. "I don't know. Even if you find them someday, you might not like them. They left you in an alley. They didn't travel hundreds of kilometers across barren wasteland and an ocean for you. This stubborn idiot raising you is your father, and no one in this world will replace him."

The initial fear of insulting the doctor with the only name she knew her by until recently dissipated with her rant. Ranko tried to imagine all of the moments Kuru had described and couldn't help but smile as her heart fluttered. Memories of lullabies alleviating pain of fevers and ushering her to worlds shaped in part from the books the former once read nightly. Fine, controlled movements accented whatever action he performed from walking through the street to carrying her on his back while cooking and dodging the spirited dives the mice made to shower him in affection. The vast emptiness with only the rhythm of feet disturbing dead brush and sand and the cadence of lost scripts cited beneath an ocean of stars. They came easily for the first time in over a day. Her hand found her father's, squeezed his thumb tight, and leaned into the warmth of his skin.

"Touch is the most important of our five senses." Kuru repeated what she told the mice earlier when they tried to leave the bedroom. They, like Ranko, had relished what little sign of life the sleeping patient could give. "Humans need the warmth of others to survive. His mind is asleep, but his body isn't. You are giving him what he needs most, and he's grateful for the company."

She did and did not understand what Kuru meant. She couldn't imagine how her father would know eight little animals, three adults, two robot mice, and a little girl were watching over him right now, but to believe otherwise would be to swallow poison.

* * *

"I found you."

His eyes bolt open. Viridian towers of grass reach for the cloudless blue sky. They bend to the gusts of wind and to the brown-haired girl standing over him. She wore a familiar old knitted sweater, only with the colors inverted.

_Where am I? Is this...?_

Her arms lifted him as if he were no more than a feather. Everything opened up around him as the smells of wild grass and the pollen of flowers in bloom at the edge of a forest untouched by the wars that ravaged the earth.

"It's been nine years, singer. I wondered if you had forgotten this place or forgotten me."

_After how I failed you, of course not._

The smile she made was unnatural. Had he gone in with the intention to save her, had he broken in immediately to spare her from her fate, he may have known her well enough to know for certain that this was not really Safu.

_Where are you taking me?_

The canopy of trees covered the girl's expression in pale shadow as she carried him into the forest. He had seen these leaves on fire, consumed in colors that marred his back and consumed his home. The low buzz of a familiar insect grew louder as the girl brought him to a clearing full of faces framed by black hair he had long forgotten. Their grey eyes fell upon him as they made way for him and the girl.

_What's happening here?_

The girl made her way past the last person in a segment of a circle crowding around a man, a woman, and an elder weeping over a nest built on a slab of stone. Fixated on something pale and red, they did not turn to greet the late arrivals.

She stopped before the center of the circle and spoke to the opening in the forest canopy, "We have found the rest of him, Eluyrias."

_'The rest of' me?_

As if to answer his question, the girl moved around to the opposite side of the weeping three surrounding -

Four limbs barely held together to a torso covered in burns, scars, and black tar. A gaping void in the center left of the chest. A head full of pitch black hair he had not seen in years. Eyes glazed over and strained from tears that continued to flow long after death. The chapped and ruptured lips were beyond recognizable if not for it's mirror on the face of the woman, whose right thumb massaged counterclockwise circles into the severed wrist of the offering. The elder lays herbs and flowers over the mangled body and sighs. But it was the way the man's lips curved into a frown to stifle an agonizing sob he refuses to release.

The three say nothing but a single word, a name.

"Thank you, Safu." The wind carried the voice from someplace not too close, but not too far from the clearing. "It has been twenty-one years since a sacrifice has been made. With the last Mao here, please begin the final ceremony."

_What?_

Safu carried him to the slab and placed him in the chest cavity. Everything became disoriented and scrambled. Knowing up from down was impossible, but he heard the voices very clearly. They uttered words he could not make out, but a single voice began to sing.

_The wind steals the soul away, humans thieve the heart_  
_O earth, wind, and rain; O heavens, O light_  
_Keep everything here_  
_Keep everything here, and_  
_Live in this place_

Gran was right. He no longer had to construct the sound of the voice he inherited. The voice rekindled a long-dead spark and made him want to run into her open arms and feel the gentle kicks of the little life inside her. If this ritual meant he could know that feeling again, he could carve his throat so he can perfectly convey the same beauty and comfort with his voice, then maybe, just maybe...

_Wait._

As the woman finished the first verse, he tried to recall a little girl that looked like him as much as the man and woman standing over his body. There were children in the crowd, but none looked at him the same as the three around him. No one but him and Gran survived the fire. The tears fell faster as he recalled the flames swallowing his home, trapping his sister inside. His scar burned through his spine, biting into the marrows of bone and the nuclei of nerve cells.

Then blinding, agonizing pain started at his arm, crawled up to his heart, and spread in all directions as the injected chemical flowed through every major and minor blood vessel. The following incision somehow hurt even more, and the woman in white laughed as the world turned red and told him to stop "overacting". Right above it, the caustic burn of a different chemical that would not let his blood clot. More sensations flooded and overwhelmed him, pushing beyond any reasonable boundary and threshold. They arrived chronologically from his capture to the first bullet to starvation in the West Block to his first time when he hadn't yet fully understood his sexuality to Inukashi's dogs to Sasori strangling him to the bullet he took to pirate attacks and illnesses he caught on his travels to muggings he failed to avoid.

He quickly learned which pains where physical and emotional, and as he long suspected, the emotional were most unbearable. The loss, loneliness, disappointment, guilt, doubts, and despair that came with the happiness, comfort, laughter, relief, certainty, and hope he pretended he never felt. He locked them away, and now they cascaded upon him all at once, bleeding together into an ugly mass that needed purification. He wanted to scream louder than when he was tortured, louder than when he realized he truly had no home to return to.

A song could never purify him. It would only take him away from the messes he created and promises he broke. He had so many failures, too many to count, but he tried anyway in a desperation to break the spell that overpowered him.

 

_"My name? I'll tell you when you've rested and recovered. It'll be your get-well present."_

_"If you do this for me, if you're overcome with unbearable pain, I promise I'll rush to your side. No matter where you are, I'll sing a song for your soul."_

_"No more secrets, no more lies. No more goodbye kisses. I swear to you on this handsome face you punched the shit out of."_

_"Summer, huh? Wonder what that'd be like. I've never thought that far ahead."_

_"It's a vow. Reunion will come, Shion."_

_"Long day at work and the voice is dead. How about a lullaby for another night, princess?"_

_"Finish your rainbow-colored meal instead of painting the floor and we'll continue our adventure in Wonderland with Alice."_

_"I promise, Ranko. I mean it this time. I'll tell you everything, everything."_

 

There were so many, too many things he needed to do, and hearing him recite them all was overwhelming. When the feelings clashed and fought for dominance, everything snapped back into place. His vision returned to his eyes, and he was greeted by the faces of the crowd, his parents, Gran, and Safu.

"You wish to say something, singer?" The voice came from his side, near the source of the tickling sensation at his neck. "Is there something you wish?"

He sucked in a breath that filled his reanimated lungs. "I have to go back."

"Again?" Safu's face matched Eluyrias' puzzlement.

"Again. Ranko is alone. I can't leave her."

"You have taught her to live and survive no matter the circumstance. You believe yourself unworthy of her. If you cannot give her what she needs, will you not let her practice the ideals you preached?"

"No!"

He cried without thinking. He didn't want to think. He didn't need to think. The images flooded his brain on their own. Images of a little girl with curly hair of red celosias running through muddy forests, screaming while strapped to a bloody operating table, falling in a pit to be greeted by a mountain of rotting flesh and chattering insects, crawling away from men promising the pleasure they'd give will overpower the pain, limping through radioactive wastelands and abandoned ruins with blood - some not hers - soaking torn clothes sliding off her malnourished shoulders, holding a gun to her head while crying for the rat that abandoned her.

"No," he repeated weakly, pathetically. A warmth embraced his hand - especially his thumb - that he focused his thoughts on to regain his composure. "She deserves better, but the world will hurt her more than I ever could."

"Such foolish certainty. Any human can cite beautiful words after they have failed to live up to their ideals and are desperate to survive. Why should a god uphold the promise her promisee no longer believes is valid?"

"I know I'm a fool, a complacent fool wasting time and breath." His body felt reconnected and whole, but it wasn't really him. This world's hole was weakening. "But a little girl sees something in me that hasn't been corrupted. It wouldn't be fair to not have the story of her father to end without closure and debts paid."

Eluyrias laughed. "The insolent infant has grown more arrogant with age." 

"That's not all."

"Is that so?" She knew what he was about to say, so she waited.

Everyone was already around him at his most vulnerable, so tears would not make this any more humiliating. He forced his eyes open. Between the faces and the leaves he could see the hill and the city rebuilt on the shoulders of someone far stronger than he. Who drew strength from his emotions. Who lay his feelings before others without hesitation or fear of rejection.

"It's been nine years, and I haven't seen what was reborn from the ashes of No.6."

"You won't like what you'll see," said Safu, no longer held by the trance and eyes brewing emotions she refused to let the rest of her face wear.

"Maybe, but running away the second time didn't make anything easier. I have to go back or else I'll never be free from the past. If I don't go back, I'll never be able to live with myself, and you wouldn't like me at my worst." 

Safu placed her hand by his neck, and the tickling sensation ceased. When she lifted her palm, a black wasp engulfed in glowing light stared back at him. Amazing how something so small could command such devotion and fear.

"As I watched the humans prove themselves able to change and grow, the human who implored me to offer them mercy lost his way. May there be no correlation. There will not be a next time, singer."

He cracked a smile, either to test how much strength he regained or to prove his resolve:

_"Because I could not stop for Death,_  
_He kindly stopped for me;_  
_The carriage held but just ourselves_  
_And Immortality.'"_

The goddess laughed at his daring, but neither she nor Safu hinted at what she found worthy of laughter, leaving a timid soul shivering at the enigmatic timbre. Everyone else displayed some manner of affection and humor. The man and Gran were particularly amused, stroking his hair or clasping his hand. The woman placed a kiss on his forehead and brushed the bridge of his nose with her finger. He didn't sneeze, but he wanted to.

Once the brief moment of mirth ended, the wasp took flight. Her light warmed them as she ascended to the trees and the sky above. One by one everyone in attendance wished him well and good luck. After another her turn, his mother sang another song, granting him more strength to return to reality and reminding him that she, his father, Gran, and his people will wait to greet him and lead him to the forest. 

_Soul-twin long lost, so briefly found_  
_Stay close to me, never let go_  
_In wake_  
_In sleep_  
_In dreams_  
_In this life and the next_

When only Safu was left by his side and the sounds and sensations of the real world began to bleed into the imaginary, she leaned over him and spoke, "Please, hurry."

_I will.  
_

"I know you will, but I just... I thought nothing could hurt me more than seeing Shion happy with you. But this..." A single tear betrayed her. "This is so much worse. None of this should have happened, and I can't do anything to make this right..."

He didn't understand, but he couldn't speak. His eyes closed and the forest had faded away; the stone turned soft and dipped to hold him. The last words he heard from Safu were "Return to Shion's side", expressing the faith in him when he used to fulfill every promise but weakened by the fear his renewal would die prematurely by the new habit that led him astray.

_He has someone else by his side now. But I'll go back, Safu, for your sake and mine._

The next thing he heard was a small voice, a gentle voice struggling to tackle words too big to pronounce. A brittle voice that kept trying in the face of uncertainty and fear she could not shake. She did not yet tap into the frequency to carry the audience to a world away from this one where they can heal and be free for a short while. Someday she might with him as her teacher.

His mouth and throat were wet from water administered not long ago, and he felt he could easily pick up from where she struggled. The words filled his lungs to be expelled, nearly the same words he cited under the lights of a dingy theater with mold eating at the stage. Far above the rows of gawking men lusting over him was a patch of white. Nothing mattered but those eyes that followed him, those ears that captured him, that voice that praised him, those hands that saved him. Despite being young, reckless, and shameless, he was too insecure and scared back then to improvise. The manager would have killed him for changing his lines to something so random, but facing  _him_ , who'd recognize the meaning behind the words, would grant him a more painful death.

Too many kilometers were between them now, but he had to practice for the day when the distance between them closes. Until the second they meet again, Nezumi had to perform something. His soul and half-asleep vocal chords demanded it.

_Where the bee sucks, there suck I._  
_In a cowslip's bell I lie._  
_There I couch when owls do cry._  
_On a bat's back I do fly_  
_After summer merrily._  
_Merrily, merrily shall I live now_  
_Among the asters the wind doth carry._

"Papa?!"

_Chit-chit-chit! Cheeeep!_

Ranko flung herself at him, forcing the air out of his chest and forcing his eyes open. She laughed, roped her arms around him, and buried her face into his neck. Six living mice and two rats dove into his clothes and hair, snuggling against his skin and crying as loudly and unintelligibly as their human sister. Between loud, hysterical sobs Nezumi caught "couldn't sleep", "thought you died", and "don't leave me". His entire body, already aflame from the tsunami of affection, burned even hotter. He tried not to think if Eluyrias didn't give him another chance; the images his brain had conjured have already given him enough nightmares for the rest of his life.

The door burst open and three adults rushed in to investigate the pandemonium. Nezumi did not miss the bags under their eyes or the flashes of anger that relief immediately replaced. Snow and Ink followed right behind them and dove into the pile of hysterical creatures who feared for Nezumi's wellbeing. Not a single soul bit or insulted or lectured him, no matter how ready Rikiga in particular looked.

"I'm okay." A pathetic wheeze is all he could make until some of the pressure from Ranko and the mice lifted from his chest and neck. "I'm fine."

Tears and snot drenched Ranko's face when she looked up. A chestnut mouse and a white rat who recovered quickly -  _Ichigo and Nelo?_ \- carried a scarf from his drawer and gave it to him to dry Ranko's face. They had to move slightly for Nezumi to sit up and place the girl on his lap.

"I-I'm sorry, papa..." she whimpered, looking down at her dress. "I-I couldn't leave you."

"No, Ranko, it's my fault I put you in danger."

"You t-told me to r-run..."

"And I was an idiot to say so. That was asking too much of a girl who has no one and no where to go. I'm so sorry, Ran."

She trembled, ready to fall to pieces yet again; Ranko was not cut from the same cloth as Nezumi. Teaching her how to defend herself over many years may better prepare her for future dangers, but she did not have the inert impulse to think fast on her feet and save herself at the expense of others. Or maybe Nezumi was just as paralyzed as her when the fire destroyed his home, but he woke up at the right time to move. Or maybe he would have burned to death if Gran did not find him. Whatever the truth was, it didn't matter.

He held Ranko's chin up and made her look at him. "I can't win every fight, but know that I will always do anything to keep you safe. If I fail, let the mice protect you, and don't blame yourself for my mistakes. It will never be your fault, Ran. _Never_. Okay?"

She nodded. The haunted shroud didn't lift from over her eyes, meaning something else continued to bother her. Her eyes avoided his for a heartbeat but returned just as quickly. Nezumi dreaded her words, but his thumb brushed her cheek, encouraging her to speak.

"You promised... you'll tell me everything."

"I did."

"When?"

His hand cupped her cheek and dried any fresh tears he missed. "Give me a day to recover, and this genie will grant your wish. Depending on how things go after the big bad adults talk, I may have a surprise for you, my lady."

It wasn't his smoothest recovery; he could feel six eyes rolling at his pathetic line. However, the mice and rats broke into cheers, and a wide, toothy smile filled Ranko's puffy face. To see her happy, to glow so brightly filled him with a little of the spirit he left to winds on a path he turned his back on.

How Nezumi managed to make two brown-eyed naturals so immeasurably happy while he couldn't do the same for himself was a mystery he knew he could never solve.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he finally could look at her, Ranko choked as her throat burned and swelled. Within the molten silver of his eyes, she could see Ophelia, Juliet, Isolde, and every character he played who had suffered and died because of a four letter word. If love could reduce a man like her father - who had been known as a hardened criminal, an unstoppable demon, an unflappable rogue - to this broken state, Ranko didn't know if she ever wanted to experience it.

"The south winds roars at night,  
Curlews hasten in their flight,  
The air is damp and warm.  
Desire to sleep has vanished now,  
Spring has arrived in the night  
In the wake of a storm."

\- Hermann Hesse,  _Gertrude_

* * *

When one becomes set in their behaviors or thoughts, the moment an opportunity for change might be easy to miss or near impossible to seize until it is too late. To break established norms, one must recognize the patterns that lead them to the same results no matter how different the initial starting point or how pure the initial intention to reform. One must be a disciplined individual or have a healthy support network in order for them to be able to recognize their own limitations and faults. Luck is a third possibility, rarer to come by than the presence of a mythical creature that may have once inhabited Earth.

Nezumi didn't want to think about what opened his eyes, if that's what really happened, because he didn't know how or if he was changing. He awoke nursing a bruise from Rikiga's fists last night, and while he could still hear Safu's plea, the intense feelings of that dream-like experience were waning ever slowly by the second. Crossing the suspension footbridge over self-driving and electric cars on the industrial highway separating the docks from the strip of dilapidated low-income apartments on the edge of Uaica, the world around him did not become kinder or more compassionate. From those young to old, single to partnered, with children to without, each person he passed lived their own lives and had their own stories, their own trials and tribulations. How many of them have walked the same line without deviation for years without question? How many had inspiration strike them, only to fail to capture the lightning in a bottle and use the gift they received from the sky or whatever god they worshiped? How many hearts have they twisted and promises they broke, and how many had cared about the damage they inflicted on those they claim to love?

Thinking about other people made Nezumi regret reading so many tragic poems, cynical plays, and clever witticisms, all of which laugh in the face of optimism even in its most genuine and productive forms. If nothing else, a baby girl he had rescued made him no longer question if he should think solely of himself to survive. No amount of pretending could reverse this change, and who knew how else Ranko had made him unrecognizable to his sixteen-year-old self, who solely helped others for a fee.

He did not have to explain to the leader why he was leaving the smuggling operation. If anything, by judging the sudden burst of energy and excitement in his speech and movements, the leader had expected Nezumi's departure sooner. He gave the rat his share of the spoils earned in the last job and kicked him out with a smile and a threat to slit his throat if he failed to turn a new leaf. Wescott and the cat boy allowed Nezumi to leave the warehouse with minimal confrontation from the others, particularly a dour and nosy Joacim. As a last second measure, he gave each of them a prototype robot mouse that had the intercept-and-track technology built in Snow that had saved their lives in many jobs where traffickers appeared to ambush them. Whether they used them for their original purpose or to study the technology of the traffickers, business can continue while subverting the most reprehensible sector of the black market. Wescott promised to write a book about her experiences one day, and the cat boy would continue to find Grant's family and memorialize a life lost at sea three years ago.

Nezumi then boarded a tram to the Boeing District to complete business at Lily's parlor. Boeing was one of the few companies to outlive the destruction of the United States, helped Brazilian separatist rebels construct No.4, and profited off three decades of war and coups until they abandoned their weapons research and manufacturing in accordance with the Babylonian Accord. What remained of the conglomerate's husk repurposed their aircraft and vehicles for civilian transportation, thus revitalizing global trade. While a "utopia" in its own way, No.4 had enough glass  and dirt roads to carve an abyss between classes, but the many activities deemed illegal in the old world were very much legal, regulated, and popular to appease the elite and the masses alike.

Lily's establishment held a panoramic view on the twenty-seventh floor of the entire city from the bay to the east to tram line to Parque da Chapada dos Guimarães to the west. It resided in the tallest publicly-owned high-rise, rivaled only by the Babel Tower that housed the legislature, the courthouses, the President, and his cabinet. That eccentric government building intentionally titled towards the dawning sun as a symbol of humanity's revitalization and to pay homage to its predecessor in former Pisa, Italy. From their glass tower a few blocks away from the market where Carnival began, Lily's Family mocked the eyesore by the full-wall window of the main lobby. If no one knew better, one would assume the immaculate stone floors, forest scented air fresheners, and sharply-suited receptionists belonged to the world's leading financial firm instead of a brothel.

One of the suited employees, a green-eyed retired futebol player, greeted Nezumi and led him to Lily's office in the middle of the suite, surrounded by five hallways leading to massage rooms, bedrooms, BDSM lairs, a sauna, and private theaters. He kept his farewell to the madam brief, having interrupted her meeting with a town magistrate to settle a blackmail scandal out of court. As she accepted his intel for the jobs he could not complete and the lease for his apartment to sell, Nezumi could not ignore the magistrate's demands to have the "whore" who ruined his reputation to be killed. Even the only city-state that legalized prostitution had not yet completely removed the stigma of the profession. He could have earned more working for Lily, but Nezumi wanted neither the breed of clients Larissa endures daily nor possibility of Ranko following in his footsteps.

Just as she crossed his mind on his way out, Nezumi spotted Larissa ushering an elderly man into her room. He was a regular, a man who lost his wife four years ago and still had not moved past his grief, something he did not keep secret. He limped with a cane, and today he appeared on the verge of death, skin grey and relying on the woman's only arm to help him through. Larissa once said she had no preference for her customers and did not mind playing a therapist, but the clients who returned all had no one to talk about the problems that weighed enough to kill an elephant. "Look around you. We don't need cases like No.6 to prove utopia doesn't cure human suffering," she had said.

 

_"Then why are you here?"_

_Larissa refills their glasses of limonada suíça. Neither can pretend their bodies are craving sex nor give the other the reprieve they need. So they lay on beaded pillows and drink in the hues of sunset painting the room of sheer fabrics and spice-scented candles burnt sienna._

_"I studied counseling until my parents lost their carpeting shop to automation. They couldn't afford retraining and my education, so I had to leave school and find work. This is the only job that pays well, lets me use the skills I learned, and doesn't require a license. And having nice tits helped." She laughs._

_Nezumi notices his eyes do fall on her bare breasts before the arm she was never born with. She fits the description of beauty described in European classical literature enough for some to overlook something the vapid viewed as disgusting. Traffickers avoid her despite her light-born eyes and hair._

_He sees the tension in her jaw. "You'd rather be doing something else."_

_"Don't we all? But I like where I am now. After my parents died three years ago, I can finally live for myself."_

_"That's not what your wrist says." The scar is fresh, a day old. She flinches as if he stroked it. "You have no children, no family, and nothing to hold you back. Why stay here and tell strangers to live out their dreams when you don't live by your own advice?"_

_She sips her drink._

_A muffled cry of ecstacy from next door bleeds through the wall._

_"My parents did everything to reopen their shop, but they died over a lost bet and left me to pay off their debts. I don't know what my dream is, Nezumi, but I won't chase impossible dreams like them. If it means I have to keep soul searching while fucking strangers, I'll make the most of what I have."_

_The sour limonada suíça scratches his throat. She readily admits to giving up and not trying. He doesn't know why that frustrates him._

_The silk bed is soft, but cold, even with another person next to him. "You’re afraid. That’s not a much better way to live than what I’ve done."_

_Her rueful gaze turns to the window as if she could fly away with a thought. "I envy and pity you, Nezumi. I admire those who'd do anything to survive, but if they forget to live, they're already dead."_

  

He had only thanked her for watching over Ranko while he slept. Not once when she shared her observations did he acknowledge her concern for him. She gave multiple warnings about the direction he was going, about the dangers of having no direction or purpose to strive for, and he had ignored them all until his body forced him to rethink his choices.

When their eyes met, Larissa wore a cold, wry smile. She gave him no time to speak, as she closed the door before he could approach her. Maybe she knew he didn't intend to take her for granted, or maybe she resented him for not taking care of himself. Whatever she felt, she had more troublesome clients than a bitter wanderer pretending to have no heart, and having him not express gratitude was the least of her problems.

Some things in life could never be understood, and sometimes people sought closure from stories they will never see to the end. Rather than lament and hold more regrets than he already carried, he hoped his only thank you for the most selfless act she performed for him and his decision to leave No.4 would relieve some of the debt he could not repay in full.  At the very least, Larissa did not express any surprise at his announcement and in hearing him say Shion's name while awake and clearheaded.

Nezumi expected and dreaded to hear the voice return throughout the day, from spotting the necklace when he tucked Ranko back under the blanket he disturbed to buying plane tickets to leave that evening, but he heard nothing. No phantom caresses upon his neck where he lowered his guard without knowing it. Realizing how much he threw away with the pain and memory of May 19, 2022, his body ached for the void to be filled with anything, even scorn or rejection, just so he could have closure for only one of dozens of never-ending stories unfolding in his life.

The azure sky above the orange city of stone and glass had a single cloud rolling in from the west.

* * *

On March 7 at 5:48pm, they stepped off the tram in front of the airport's south entrance with everything they could carry in one bag per person. Rikiga had claimed that people would arrive at an airport at least two hours before boarding back when there were over one hundred internationally-recognized countries. Hardly anyone from that era lived today to challenge his statement, but her father made an attempt from what he could intuit from books and nine years of traveling, which Yako challenged the merit of such a knowledge base. As the three adults exchanged witty comments far less hostile than last night's conversation, Ranko slipped her hand into the messenger bag Yako had bought for her while she babysat the girl for the day. Three of the most vulnerable mice they kept tickled her hand with their tiny noses and gentle whiskers. Mocha, Murasaki, and Seldon were registered as "therapy pets" and could pass through customs (Snow and Ink would not appear on biometric scans, and the remaining five creatures were healthy and mature enough to sneak onboard through alternate means).

While neither being the largest nor having the most impressive architecture, the swarms of people in No.4's airport reminded Ranko of the plaza. The mice could only do so much for her without causing an uproar in public. She leaned against her father, who placed a firm hand on her head, an assuring if not comforting gesture. Feeling her tremble, he stroked her hair without disturbing her braids.

After processing the tickets for their flights at the counter, Rikiga gave one last pep talk to Ranko and her father. "Security is still enforced in No.6, but it's nowhere near as crazy as before like banning books or art and whatnot. You guys have valid IDs and GCD records prove you’re related, so no alarms will go off while getting on or off the plane. Once you land, customs will check you and your bags. Unless either of you have served prison time or Eve performs a striptease, there is no reason for an agent to pull you aside."

Between Yako scolding his language around a minor and her father playing offended ("Amazing. Your keen nose caught the scent of my master plan, old man."), no one had room to answer her question about what the word "striptease" meant.

"Back on point: how active are traffickers in No.6?" asked Yako. "I know it has the most homogenous population of the city-states, but aren't genetic minorities more valuable there?"

"Compared to your melting pot of a hometown? Definitely." Her father clicked his tongue when he checked the time on his bracelet: thirty minutes until takeoff. "I haven't intercepted any communications about that area. The oldest known group was founded in No.3, so it and even No.5 have more active markets."

"True, but you may not have heard anything near No.6 because there's a different group of traffickers we call the Wasps. Yeah, I know, Eve, don't give me that look." Rikiga waved a dismissive hand. "File a complaint with the People's Committee for the dumb name, but it's easy to remember. Anyway, at least two of the five trials going on now in No.6 involve them. Since some of their own once held positions in the old government, the Wasps don't follow the same MO as the Suns. They don't catch as many victims at a time, but they charge a fortune for their 'goods' and the incidents are random enough to cause headaches for everyone involved. Reminds some of the few who had witnessed the wasp attacks the old No.6 tried to cover up. I suggest you be careful anyway since you and Ranko stand out."

Not a single word Rikiga said had swayed her father; the cunning and vigilant trickster had returned at last. "I'd love to stay and mingle more, but don't you have a flight in the other direction, old man?"

"You're not getting any younger yourself, Eve. I may not be there to see the party, but if anything goes south, I _will_ know about it."

"Wait!" Ranko exclaimed, jumping between the two men before things could escalate between them. "Y-You're not coming with us, Uncle Rikiga?"

A sharp gasp slipped as the greying man knelt to her eye level and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Oh, Ranko, such manners! Never forget them!" Yako snorted and Ranko's father rolled his eyes, both reactions Rikiga ignored. "I have work in No.3, but if you and your papa decide to stay in No.6, we'll meet again."

It was one of the best things she heard all day. She gave the man a hug, and Rikiga showered her in more praises, which resulted in her father making a comment about giving boys and men what they deserve for getting too close to her. ("Oh, look! The  _fa'r_  has grown into a papa wolf!" Yako's signature laugh rang through the main entrance of the airport, and her father made more veiled threats to avoid the topic of parenthood in front of dozens of curious eyes.)

Fifteen minutes before departure, everyone said their goodbyes before finding their flights to their cities. Yako held Ranko back for an extra minute, and the girl did not want to reveal why until she and her father boarded the plane. They moved through security as easily as Rikiga said, and none questioned the relations between the red-haired, tan-skinned child, the black-haired, pale-skinned adult accompanying her, and three wild "therapy" mice.

When they boarded the plane, her father pointed Ranko to the front cabin, where seats as big as the beds in the apartment were sectioned off depending on how many passengers traveled together. Their section had two sets of two seats around a table with a holographic screen in the center; the interface displayed hundreds of options for entertainment and food. Beneath the table were shelves with soft blankets, puffy pillows, and their five companions. Her father bowed and allowed his princess to make herself comfortable for the long trip in a cramped metal tube flying thousands of kilometers above the ground. She asked how he afforded such seating arrangements, but her father was too busy praising her for perfectly pronouncing a complex word like "extravagant".

Even with advancements for fuel and engines to make air-travel faster, it still took twenty hours to arrive in No.6. Staring out the window to see firsthand the images of Earth's surface captured by Project Rediscover and indulging on the best food either had had in their lives did not relieve the pockets of boredom that plagued the trip. Only two things made time pass enough to ease their sanities.

One was a collection of files in a chip Yako had given Ranko. Upon plugging it into the interface, her father's eyes widened in horror at images of ladies, witches, spirits, and princesses - all pale, black-haired beauties sharing a voice that molded Ranko's psyche more than the woman who gave birth to her. At a loss for words, her father rested his flaming left cheek on his palm and turned to study the South American coastline along the Pacific to hide his right. Counting the number of small villages supporting purification facilities long the ashen shores of Peru did not entirely block out the pure wonder of a child.

"Auntie Yako recorded your shows, papa!" the girl said, bouncing in her seat and unable to control her volume. "She saw you in _Carmen_ and _Hamlet_ and _The Lion and the Jewel_ and a bunch of other plays! You were in _Sound of Music_ too, but she didn't see it. You're amazing! Why did you stop acting? Will you act again? I want to see you on stage, papa! Can you play Ariel in _The Tempest_? You sing his songs so well and you have the best voice in the world! Please, papa?"

Her father waited and waited for her questions to cease for she had thousands. By the time she stopped, every inch of his body turned such a scalding shade of crimson that Snow notified his ID bracelet to check his temperature and recommend treatments for fever. Even the flight attendant asked if he needed to drink ginger tea or to lie down. Once Ranko had stopped and waited for her father to recompose himself, he agreed to watch some of his old performances with her. He recited some of the famous lines and explained events or conversations Ranko did not understand. She asked questions and told him what plays she'd want him to perform and if he'd do so when they arrived in No.6. Her father made no clear answer one way or the other, preferring to start another video or checking their arrival time.

When they exhausted the video library and ordered the biggest meal they had in their entire lives, her father began the second activity to pass time.

"'Nezumi' is not my real name. I had forgotten the name my family gave me a long time ago. There have been times I'd dream of my childhood, of my parents calling me, but humans have a way of not remembering the stories our minds craft while we sleep. Whatever my real name is, it won't hold the same meaning as 'Nezumi'. Too many know me as 'the rat', and it suits me just fine."

_Chirp-chit!_ Seldon settled on his master's shoulder and pawed at his cheek.

"Exactly," her father laughed, stroking the mouse's back with his finger.

Having finished the last bite of chocolate cake she savored slowly, Ranko sat back in her seat across from her father and watched him carefully. "Did you name yourself?"

The humor he donned vanished and he stopped petting Seldon. "No, my godfather did. I didn't meet him until I was ten."

"Ten? 'Godfather'? What-"

"Be patient, princess!" How could the hearty laugh of a child come from a young man with eyes she had seen in world-weary sages in movies, books, and plays? "You will know everything in time. I have to start in the beginning or else nothing that happens later will make sense."

Ranko kept still and listened as her father described what little he could recall from his early life: the forest undisturbed for centuries, the Mao, the goddess they worshiped, and the fire. She did not miss the fact the people who destroyed everything her father had known came from the very city they would reach in fifteen hours, but she trusted he would address that point later.

Her father had skipped over details too somber and scary for a four-year-old to handle while preserving enough of the core nature of events, places, and people he had encountered. Ranko would learn the darkest facets of her father's life much later, but the snippets she received on that plane were mountains of gold offered at her feet. By the time he described the plan to escape No.6 after living with his godfather for two years, he had wrapped Ranko in one of the blankets and let her legs drape over his lap. The rats and mice climbed over each other for the warmest spot or the front row-seats to the event. Away from the others, Seldon nested in her hair and made little noise.

"...I laid there, face down in the mud. Cold and drenched. Scared I would die alone after a life of running and living off scraps to survive. Not knowing if my life had any meaning to it. But then..." His posture and the muscles in his face relaxed. From her angle and the tenderness of his voice, Ranko didn't know if he was happy or sad at the memory. The word she learned later to describe his mood was melancholy. "...I heard a scream. I looked up and saw a window open in the house of the yard I collapsed on. A boy stood on that balcony in the middle of the storm with his arms wide open and screamed like there was something pent-up inside him that had to escape. Like me, he was trapped. When he let go of whatever was trapped inside him, he went back inside and kept the window open. I didn't know what it meant or why he did it, but it was like an invitation. 'You'll be safe here. Come in.'" 

The boy then treated her father's wound from what he learned in the best school and gave him clean clothes, hot chocolate, stew, cherry cake, and a bed to sleep in. Without asking anything in return, the stranger gave him respite away from the turbulent winds, the pounding rain, and rumbling thunder that would have killed him until dawn. Tucked under his arm, Ranko heard his soothing voice falter when he admitted he had never known how warm human contact could be until that night.

When she finally had the chance to know the truth, she asked, "That boy... is he Shion, papa?"

He grew pale and stiff at hearing the same. Her father became a statue, eyes transfixed at something behind the seat across from them and from beyond the plane. The storm was coming just as he showed he had enough life in him to sing and tell stories.

Ranko rested her head against his chest. "You talk in your sleep, papa. You had a nightmare. " It was a lie, but she wanted her real father to come back. There was so much to his story that had to be known, no matter how much a single word could disarm him and reduce him to tears. He had to fight against whatever made him lose the magic he brought to stories and songs. He had said Shion's name last night more times than in her entire life, and Ranko did not know why it scared him now.

As if anticipating this scene, Ink projected the image Ranko had seen when she found the necklace on the table. The man, a government official, did look about the same age as her father. Seldon's low chatter sounded like a frustrated grumble. After releasing something between a sob and a sigh, her father arched his head back. His bangs obscured his eyes. He also muttered something about Shakespeare's  _Hamlet_ and a tie that Ranko did not understand.

She tried again. "Do you miss him?"

A second of silence. "Yes." His strained voice was barely above whimper.

"Do you love him?"

A sharp inhale. Ranko could hear his heart rate quicken and his breathing become shallow. Were she across from him, her father's face would be stoic to compensate for his inability to control his pain. She would have never known how much he tried to control feelings he was taught to never have lest he be too weak to survive if he never let her close enough to feel the turmoil under his skin. Had he not pushed himself to this point, had he been better at hiding his perceived weaknesses, would he never tell her anything about his life?

"Papa?"

When he finally could look at her, Ranko choked as her throat burned and swelled. Within the molten silver of his eyes, she could see Ophelia, Juliet, Isolde, and every character he played who had suffered and died because of a four letter word. If love could reduce a man like her father - who had been known as a hardened criminal, an unstoppable demon, an unflappable rogue - to this broken state, Ranko didn't know if she ever wanted to experience it.

Then something warm and firm sparked in his eyes as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. "I know what you're thinking, and you're making the same mistake I did. I lived by Gran's words so closely that I had no idea what to do when I met someone who put me in situations I was never prepared for. Survival and independence at the cost of everything else made me weaker, not stronger. Trust me, Ran, you don't know what the world is like to swear off love before knowing what it does to people. Learn this now and never forget it, so it doesn't take you twenty years to figure out how you never were really alive at all."

Ranko buried her face into his shirt to hide. She wanted to understand her father, but trying made her imagine things she had never thought were possible. Two arms and the tender paws of her siblings enveloped her in warmth she had never not known. She had little, but her father gave her enough to feel safe and happy in spite of the jobs he took that added more scars to his body. How much of who he is was shaped by the things had never had but he gave her? How was the world so cruel to him that it took a boy named after a flower screaming in the rain to teach him how to be "alive"? How could he say love is worth experiencing after all it did to him?

"I should have warned you my life isn't a fairy tale with a happily ever after. I'm sorry, Ran."

His hands, which hurt and tortured countless people, stroked her back so gently that she wanted to cry. If the world destroys everything else about him, she would do anything to protect this affection - no, love - he has always given her. 

The same four-letter word that made her father cry when reading _The Happy Prince_. Love was a convoluted mess her young mind didn't know how to untangle.

Ranko let out a whimper and tightened her hold of him. The last time she remembered clinging so tightly, her father laughed and called her a koala joey. When she asked what koalas were, he said he'd show her one someday in the world's largest wildlife refuge in No.5.

"There's still quite a bit of my life left to tell," her father spoke after what felt like an eternity of silence. "Should I stop or continue?"

Hearing his voice lacking emotion as she has always known it, Ranko asked him to keep going. This was her last chance to know about Shion before they enter the city in which he lives, and if her father was ready to finish his tale, she did not want to stop him. The story continued for several more hours, and her father held her like she was the one who had suffered her entire life and needed comfort.

* * *

He did not remember when he fell asleep, but Ranko bouncing on his lap and pulling his shirt relieved him from the fear of traumatizing her more than he already has. Once Nezumi opened his eyes, the girl pointed at the window and continued to talk quickly. Not even the mice - even old and sleepy Seldon - could stop rejoicing, climbing on top of each other, and spinning in circles.

"We're here, papa! We're here!"

The automated announcement that followed confirmed her excited claim. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at the city-state of No.6, formally named 'Baraen' or 'Rose Garden' by its citizens. It's 7:35pm on March 7, 2027. We will be landing momentarily, so please remain seated and buckle your seatbelts. Remember to gather all personal belongings you may have before leaving the plane. Thank you for flying with us this evening, and we hope you'll fly with us again soon."

Ignoring his stomach turning to lead, Nezumi peaked outside to the see their destination illuminated by the last rays of sunlight. He had not realized how large the city was until looking at it from above. The white-and-green utopia at the foot of a small mountain range to the north, the vast farmlands to the east, and the busy river to the south. A series of dots branched off the forest of his birth to the lands beyond the edge of a developed district to the west. No other obvious artificial markers divided the districts and regions of the city. The moondrop remained in the heart of the city, but the honeycombed exterior had banners tied to them to give the structure more color and life. A spacious patch of green lay where the correctional facility once stood. New and tall buildings replaced the dilapidated makeshift structures of the West Block that survived the Manhunt. The airport did not move, but the forest had expanded further than he recalled. As they prepared to land, he spotted a modest monument of figures that greeted anyone entering or leaving the airport.

Much of the city was still under construction five years ago, but even then the design of the city felt organic in its purpose. There was freedom and choice of where to place a shop or park or monument or housing development. Now those ideals really showed from above. From just a quick glance, No.6 had completely transformed into something far greater than Nezumi imagined.

"Come on, papa!" Ranko pulled at his arm. The plane had already landed and their unregistered companions have made their way to a safe place to reunite with their sister and master. "Let's go! Shion's waiting!"

_But_ is _he waiting for you?_

The darkness that tempted to and had successfully led him astray his entire life couldn't help but ask and flood his veins with icy panic.

_What if Shion's away from the city for a few days? What will you do then? What if you find him with the woman? How would Shion react to seeing you after abandoned him on that hill only to return nine years later with a child? What if he's never forgiven you and rejects you from his life forever? What if Shion has changed so much that the boy you love is dead? What if those five years of running and crying like a coward were all for nothing? How heartbroken and disappointed would Ranko be if -_

_CHEEP, CHEEP, CHEEEEEP!_ With Ink resting in standby mode, Seldon bit his master's finger hard enough that it bled. His grape eyes bore into Nezumi's and flashed his teeth, ready to go for round two if his master didn't get his act together. Ranko, however, placed a napkin over the injury and looked upon him with sympathy. The fact a child and a mouse had to remind him to get his act together was pathetic. Nezumi schooled whatever expression concerned them, and brought all he had to play the role he cast aside and longed for the spotlight, just to forget how utterly scared to death he really feels.

Nezumi donned his leather jacket, wrapped Ranko in a scarf, grabbed their bags, and gave an impassioned monologue of select passages from Marcus Aurelius' _Meditations_  that garnered the attention and bafflement of their fellow passengers as they boarded off the plane.

"'Don't fret, despond, or murmur, if you have not always opportunities as you desire, of acting according to the right maxims. If you are beat off from them, return to them again; and content yourself that your actions are generally such as become a man; and rejoice in these good offices to which you return!'"

The more looked upon him in confusion, the more dramatic his delivery. Unable to walk straight from laughing, Ranko clung to his arm and encouraged his sudden episode.

"'Be not disturbed about futurity! You shall come to encounter with future events, possessed of the same reason you now employ in your present affairs!'"

Upon entering the terminal, an unamused security guard stopped Nezumi. "Sir, please keep your voice down and do not cause a scene. You are scaring the other customers."

He bowed deeply and flashed a wicked grin for only Ranko to see. The way she bit the inside of her cheeks to not snicker would be worthy to tease her about later. "My sincerest apologies, ma'am, for my emotions have escaped me. It has been a long flight, and I've been anxious to return to No.6 ever since my daughter was born. We've only found time to visit the city just recently."

"Is that so?" The guard stood aback at Nezumi speaking fluent Japanese, but recovered quickly enough to step back and let them proceed. "Well, welcome back to Baraen, sir. Customs and security are ahead on the left. Please be safe out there."

"Have a good evening, ma'am." Once they were far away from the terminal and approached the checkpoint in the middle of the smooth white walls, immaculate stone tiles, and floor-to-ceiling windows of the airport, Nezumi squeezed Ranko's hand, and said with genuine enthusiasm he could not muster hours before, "Now, how should we dazzle our audience tonight, my lady?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, back at No.6! It took you long enough, Nezumi, you stupid soulless bastard! Go find Shion and confess your sins if you have any hope of redemption and forgiveness! o(>_< )o
> 
> Yep, it's been eight months since I first watched/read 'No.6' and I am STILL not over it. For anyone who's been a fan for years, does it get any easier? Please tell me it does. Asano-san, look at what you've done to me. TT_TT
> 
> On another note I think now I can add "reunion fic" to the tags? Or should I...?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stars, the memorials of ancient fires long burnt out, were meant to be shared with others like legends, myths, and truths. To do otherwise - to watch the stars alone and lock stories within one's heart - would sever the gazer from the threads of the universe. Ranko had asked her father if that was what death was like, but he gazed up to seek an impossible answer within diamond grains of stardust.

"He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he."

\- John Knowles, _A Separate Peace_

* * *

Each city-state may have had a character that distinguished it from its sisters, but none represented the dichotomies of human morality and nature like No.6. The airport's monument, depicting a long-haired indigenous family of four cradling a nest of flowers and wasps in their arms, stood on the very ground where the memorialized were brutally massacred. Greenhouses, crowded with flowers and herbs cultivated by civilians performing community service and patients undergoing therapeutic treatments, were built on the demolished Twilight Cottage where the old government euthanized the elderly. Colorful banners of the eleven districts represented in the People's Committee adorned the Moondrop, where the last leg of the old government fell. A park marrying the city's sleek white architecture with soft green shrubbery absorbed the ashes of thousands sacrificed in a "labor correction camp". Startup businesses and shops repurposed much of the old manors of Chronos. Several elites lost their wealth and property once their class standing was redefined by ability and merit over intelligence. Poverty spread across the entire city-state rather than in the localized pockets of Lost Town and the West Block. Crime climbed to levels seen in No.6's sister cities not long after the dismantlement of the surveillance network.

At some point something old transformed into something new and, depending on one's ethical and philosophical perspective, not always for the better.

Ranko's eyes barely left her father as they traversed the city beneath a cloudless sky. Soft yellow lights cast shadows away for the eye to see without hiding the stars, an admirable accomplishment, but nothing could replace the Milky Way's rainbow arms weaving through the speckled curtain above a desolate wasteland. As spoiled as she was by those views when they had camping trips out in the wasteland, counting the consolations they could see while riding the river ferry from Chronos to Lost Town was good enough.

"Cygnus?" Ranko squinted at a small cluster through the open roof of the ferry.

"Latin for 'swan' and sitting in the Black Tortoise of the North Quadrant, Cygnus may be a reference to one of Zeus' many disguises when he pursued mortal women." When Ranko gave him a piece konpeitō from a bag he bought from a convenience store, he pointed to the w-shaped cluster to the northeast that caught his eye. "Cassiopeia."

Brows furrowed, Ranko thought long and hard. _'Mama' and 'purple'... Mama like papa reads Greek books. Purple like Murasaki or grapes or Shion._ "She's Andrama's mama and sits in a secret purple city."

"Not bad. You almost got the daughter's name right. 'Andromeda'."

"An-dro-me-da."

He gave her a piece of Belgian chocolate made in and imported from No.3. It was too soon to correct her on the Purple Forbidden Enclosure. "Remember to slow down and enunciate, and you'll become an expert linguist, my lady." Ranko blushed.

Other passengers watched them play their game and praised Ranko's quick learning. And elderly couple called her adorable and told her father to never stop teaching her how to think, to retain the knowledge of cultures of eras long gone. No one made a comment about her hair or that they shared no resemblance.

"I was worried the old No.6 had taken away the appreciation of art and culture from future generations forever. It warms my heart to see a young man care for a child like you do." The old woman's eyes crinkled - a sign of a genuine facial expression.

"Had we not traveled, she would have never learned what the old city repressed. This kind of exposure gave the girl such an insatiable hunger for anything creative and intellectual. How could a father not be grateful to have such a daughter?"

Ranko dropped her bag of candy that another woman - black-haired but green-eyed - picked up for her. Her father's small smile and reached his eyes, gleaming under the starry sky. When her head ached from the tears building up behind her eyes, the man, her real father, pulled her towards him, stroked her hair, and rested his head on hers. Nowhere else in the world could be safer than being in his arms.

They left their game to be completed another night.

After boarding off the ferry, the streets continued to be busy and crowded. People sang and drank at small taverns playing music of cultures and decades before the wars or crowded around venues for entertainment or learning. Three they had passed called out to her father, and he performed a similar playful act that helped them pass airport customs. He ceased the guise only once with a man Rikiga's age who complimented and reached for a tendril of Ranko's hair. Her father's voice and manner were still as a pond on a windless night, but his hold of her hand after the man ran off nearly crushed her bones.

Once they entered a quiet neighborhood of townhomes, he walked with purpose, following the Seldon's and Mocha's chattering. As Ink remained asleep in her father's bag, Ranko wondered how the old and young mice who had never been to No.6 could be leading them without her father questioning them. Seldon and Mocha climbed Ranko's leg once the wide window of a bakery came into view. It appeared to be in one house, only to expand and take up a smaller house next door. Her father's broad strides shortened the closer they descended the sloped street and came to the home business. A dim light barely seen through a second floor window was the only sign someone could be there. Upon reaching the front door, her father's slow movements did not cease, even when he knocked.

A minute of silence passed. Her father knocked again. Nothing.

"I'm tired, papa," Ranko mumbled, resting her head against his arm. _Where will we sleep?_

His right hand squeezed hers as Panpan followed Seldon and Snow in searching for an entrance into the bakery. After waiting another minute, he rang the doorbell. The remaining mice peaked out of their clothes and bags to watch for any changes their human companions could not see.

_CHEEP!!!_ Mocha cried. A light on the first floor turned on. Her father had to shush them when they heard movement towards the door.

It didn't open, but a voice spoke through the intercom. "I'm sorry, but the bakery is closed for the night. We are open from 9:00 to 6:00 tomorrow." The woman recited familiar lines with hesitation.

His grip tightened briefly before her father let go of her hand, stuffing both of his in his pockets. He cleared his throat, and spoke loud enough for his voice to carry through the wooden door. "Do you still make cherry cake, Karan?"

They heard a muffled gasp and busy movement within. The door flew open and the woman named Karan covered her mouth to mute her second gasp. She wore a white short-sleeved nightgown and wore her damp hair in a bun. Seldon, Snow, and Panpan sat on her shoulders and greeted their master and sister with front paws waving. A fourth mouse - a salt-and-pepper mouse about a month old - rubbed its head against Seldon's side like he was an old friend. They jumped off her a moment before the woman pulled Ranko's father into a hug. A head taller, the twenty-five-year-old child started at the sudden contact, but patted her back and relaxed in her arms.

Karan pulled back and dried her eyes. "I had hoped it was you when you knocked. Virga saw your mice and when I heard your voice..." Placing her hands on his arms, she sized him up. "Oh, Nezumi, you've grown up but you're still so handsome."

"And you haven't aged a day, Karan," he said with a weak, yet wry smile.

"Oh, you mustn't flatter me, dear. Nothing could make me happier than to see you again, safe and well." Then she glanced at Ranko, which made the girl blush and hide behind her father. The woman knelt down and smiled at Mocha and Murasaki, poking out their snouts and squeaked their hellos. "What's your name?"

The girl's throat constricted. Her father coaxed her in front but weaved her braids between his fingers. He did not stop her from hiding her face in his clothes. "This is Ranko, my daughter."

"Your daughter." Karan repeated with unbridled excitement in her voice. When Ranko took a peak, the woman waved at her and expressed the same affection she gave her father. "You have beautiful hair and a lovely name, Ranko. Are you hungry?"

She nodded, blushing.

"Come in! It still feels like winter some nights, and you both look you've been on a long journey. There are some leftovers from today in the kitchen, and I'll brew us some tea. Having you here is the best thing to happen this week!"

Despite the humble name, the place was a cafe rather than a bakery. Even in the dark, the establishment had the inviting and earthy charm that hung the winter coats and troubles of her guests by a fireplace to dry for as long as they stayed. Karan lit a few lights, glowing warm like a candle, while leading them behind the glass counters. The petite kitchen greeted them with hand-carved woodworks tucked in the corners of counters, on shelves above an antique stove, and at the center of a table seating four. Karan started a brew and placed baked goods on three plates for her guests. Ranko giggled as her siblings' paws and fur tickled her skin and frantically searched for an escape to dive into scones and muffins their master had hyped on the plane. She thanked the woman with a bow of her head, but her father muttered his gratitude to his plate of cherry cake.

"With cherry season starting soon, this will be all I'll make in the coming weeks," Karan said, stroking Seldon's head when he nuzzled against her hand.

Nezumi's fork picked at the lattice. "Have you been busy?"

"Yes, very much. It seems my bakery has become more of a business over the years. Kids and students in the neighborhood help me during my busy hours, but they don't ask for payment or anything. No one should work for free, but they say what I bake is worth more than money." She turned to Ranko. "What do you think?"

Sticky red filling colored the girl's cheeks and plump fruit and sugary filling oozed from her half-finished slice like erupted lava across her plate. "It's amazing! B-Better than papa said!"

The man coughed and stuffed some pie in his mouth, which made Karan laugh. They behaved as if they were always family. Ranko was excited to see where Shion would fit when the three of them were in the same room.

Gentle hands on Nezumi and Ranko's arms, she said, "There's still a bed in the room across from the bathroom where you can rest for the night. I use it as a guest room nowadays."

Ranko did not miss how quickly her father went still. He determined something from that sentence quicker than the girl, but she shared his wry when he asked, "Shion moved out?"

Karan nodded slowly. "About two years after you left Shion moved into an apartment a few blocks from his work in the Moondrop. His old bedroom is for anyone who visits for events or holidays, like Ken, your friend the dogkeeper, and their son Sion or Safu's friends from No.5."

"Shion doesn't live here, ma'am?"  _Where is he? When will we see him?_

"Please call me Karan, Ranko." Karan's smile did not reach her eyes. "I would ask when you and Nezumi want to visit him, but he's abroad right now."

_"Abroad"?_  

A soft clink of a fork falling on the table stole everyone's attention from their treats. "Where is he?"

"He's at an ecology conference in No.3 on behalf of the People's Committee. Shion spoke as a guest on a panel on reforestation earlier today, and he has another event to attend tomorrow. From what he told me, I believe he'll return Tuesday morning."

Ranko's heart sank. Most of their money was spent on the plane, and her father had enough to feed them until he found a way to bring more back into his pockets. She begged him with her eyes to go find him now, but he shook his head and averted his gaze. It would be the longest two days of Ranko's life.

"I don't know where you plan to stay and I don't have much, but you are welcome here for as long as you like." Karan took turns stroking each of the the heads of her human and rodent company. "And how about you explore the city tomorrow while you wait for Shion?"

"You've read my mind, Karan," her father said with more energy in his voice than thought possible given his earlier concern. "Actually, we crashed into old man Rikiga at No.4's airport before our flights took off. Are there any more familiar faces around?"

"Rikiga? Oh, he's been busy lately, but I'm glad you crossed paths. As for everyone else, some things have not changed much even though much of the West Block has been completely rebuilt. Ken and little Sion visit often, just like Rikiga, Lili, and little Getsuyaku, but everyone has dinner here once a month so they can see Shion. We met some of Safu's friends from No.5 when we held a service for her, and we still keep in touch with them during the holidays. Betty is a marine biologist, and I think she is also at the conference in No.3..."

Karan described many more changes that could not be seen from walking through the streets. The changes shocked her as much if not more it did for Ranko's father, given his laundry list of small twitches and shifts in eye movement. "It's easy to forget how much things have changed while still in transition." Ranko, completely devoid of her earlier shyness due in part to how easily Karan made them forget their exhaustion, and the mice asked hundreds of questions the woman answered until drowsiness overtook them. The small mouse named Virga bonded with Mocha and Murasaki quickly, and Karan insisted she was babysitting her son's companion until he returned.

Shion also gave names to mice that made her father cringe and whine about how "stupid" it was. The next two days of waiting would kill Ranko.

Her father carried the girl upstairs to what was the original storage room, Shion's old bedroom. The simple but made bed molded to Ranko and the mice better than any furniture they ever rested in. They fought against their droopy eyes to the very end, long after Karan and her father promised the stories would continue in the morning.

Purple and blue crocheted blanket up to her chin, Ranko hummed sleepily. "Hmm-hmm... 's been... long time..."

"Do you have a request for this humble nomadic minstrel, princess?"

She shook her head and sunk further beneath the sheets until only her eyes were visible. Her loose hair spread across the pillow and made the perfect nest for her "siblings", grape, grey, red, and black eyes expectant on their master.

Like two clouds drifting alone at dawn, her father went elsewhere as he recited an old lullaby. It had been the second time he sang since he woke up, and the tune was light, full of high notes he could still reach at his age. Ranko could not remember the last time she heard the song, but it calmed the anxieties in her mind and heart. From how gently his hands and voice bundled her tightly in an unfamiliar and cold place, the tale of a maid easing an unruly baby into sleep and dreaming of returning home to her family in the mountains did not reflect how her father really viewed her.

She drifted into dreams of mice and flowers dancing in the winds of a storm, none bearing nothing but love for each other and the nature in which they coexist. 

* * *

Nothing in the West Block retained any essence of what it once was, especially the old dogkeeper's hotel and surrounding neighborhood, which now had a puppet theater, two schools, five animal shelters, and three parks.

Foreign dignitaries, businessmen, and tourists filled the halls, completely remade into a pet-friendly establishment evoking the late Edō period with some flair to allow the modern technology to blend in the traditional aesthetic. A simple network of water fountains used for decoration and bathing animals greeted Nezumi and Ranko under young saplings that would grow to provide enough shade to protect most from the blaring summer sun. Hotel staff had an inconsistent dress policy, most wore plain but clean vests and blouses or casual kimono, but the atmosphere felt genuine, relaxed, and carefree.

The dogs caught Nezumi's scent the moment he stepped foot into the city, so when he arrived through the front entrance, three stood by and greeted him with low growls. Once they saw Ranko, two nudged her towards the stairs while the third darted off to bring in the old dogkeeper.

_They welcome her without question too. What does it say about me?_

When they arrived, Nezumi understood why Karan no longer called them Inukashi, for they looked nothing like the dogkeeper. A brown-haired boy of nine stood by their side and threw a hundred questions at Ranko as their parents decided to have their reunion meeting upstairs. Hair falling to their shoulder and dressed in slacks and a vest, Ken flashed their teeth when Nezumi tried to pull them away from speaking with Ranko, who nervously told them what she knew of them from her father. The "f" word made their nose and ears twitch in disbelief, a reaction identical to when they first noticed Shion was living with Nezumi.

Sion and the dogs took Ranko to a playroom next to Ken's office, and when the old business partners were far from gossiping customers and attentive staff alike, Nezumi finally had the mutt's attention.

He had spotted other changes to Ken, which he wasted no time in mentioning. "Looks like you've grown up a bit. How has being a full-time mother and business owner been, Inukashi?"

His head went sideways in a millisecond.

"You bastard!"

Twice in one week Nezumi had been on the receiving end of a strike he let himself endure. He didn't have to admit out loud that the weight of time and his broken promise was eating at him. His teeth bit the inside of his mouth upon being rightfully slapped. Oddly, it didn't hurt; he felt nothing.

"Do you have ANY fucking idea how long you've been gone?" snapped Ken. "And what's the first thing you say when you show up? 'Looks like you've grown quite a bit upstairs'? Really, you goddamn pervert?! Who the fuck do you think you are?!"

It was true though. Puberty may have arrived late and the black vest drew no special attention, the biological sex of his old business partner came to light at last. The holographic nameplate on the desk read "Ken" in the eight known languages practiced between the six city-states, and last night's conversation with Karan informed Nezumi to keep using the same ambiguous pronouns to describe them.

Wiping the blood off his lip, Nezumi retorted, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

"Fuck you!" The former dogkeeper jabbed their finger into his sternum. "Nine years, Nezumi. Nine fucking years, and this is how you act? Don't talk to me about not changing when you oughta look in the mirror yourself." They were out of breath, but the fury in their eyes showed they could rant and rave and scream until the end of time and still be unable to articulate how much the dog hated the rat.

"There are children nearby," he reminded without a hint of humor or patronization. "They wouldn't want their parents fighting all afternoon."

With understanding and reason prevailing Ken went to their desk to re-stack the pile of documents they had dropped prior to this meeting. Pictures of the hotel around the room captured the stays of Prime Minister of No.2 and members of international organizations like the World Health Organization and Global Census Bureau had stayed. From how clean the halls and refined the uniforms were, Nezumi would never have suspected the dogkeeper owned this establishment, even if it was exactly where their old home was.

The old acquaintances could hear laughter, chirps, and barks from the next room over, and Ken seemed at ease when they heard the voice of a young boy. When words could be heard, the boy and dogs were encouraging Ranko to sing, a sound that melted some of the unease building up in Nezumi's chest.

He had not forgotten his conversation with Karan before he went to bed last night and how well she hid her crestfallen demeanor around Ranko until the girl went to sleep.

 

_"I know it's my job, but..._ _I worry about Shion_ _. Even after he obtained his degrees, it's been harder and harder to pull him from meetings, conferences, and the Committee. He visits, but he's never really there in the moment. I hope you can see him and pull him out of his life of work. Even if it's for a few hours, please reach Shion, Nezumi."_

 

He shelved the memory before it could strip away the composure he regained to prepare for the old dogkeeper. Nezumi turned to study a recreation of _Red and White Plum Blossoms_ given to the hotel from the Perth Institute of Arts in No.5. "You've done well with the place."

"Yeah, and what have _you_ done? Whored yourself out until one of your fuck buddies demanded you raise the child you made her carry? I'm shocked you have a literal litter of rodents instead."

His blade appeared in his hand and kissed the skin right above Ken's jugular vein. Their eyes widened at Nezumi's sudden aggression, but seemed to relax and smile just as quickly. That wry expression angered more than smug superiority.

"Wow. Still proud of your hobby of hoarding useless baggage, rat?"

"Shut your fucking mouth, mutt."

"Children, remember?"

Wincing at his own words being used against him, Nezumi leaned in closer to hiss cold air in their ear, "I didn't spawn Ranko. The ones who did threw her away in the middle of a crime-ridden district to drown in piss, trash, and rainwater. If there's any sense in this shithole of a world - which there isn't - they probably got their heads blown off by some crime lord they crossed or became the lab rats of traffickers who'd kill their own families to get a red.

“Mock my ‘charity’ and weaknesses all you want - I honestly don’t give a fuck - but don’t drag Ranko into businesses where they see her as nothing but an object or specimen to be traded and sold to the highest bidder.”

He released Ken and slipped his knife in his back pocket. The former dogkeeper released a breath they held onto and leaned against the desk. Once they composed themself, Ken muttered, "Amazing. You're proud to have the girl as an obvious weakness, but you still got it. No clue if that makes you stupid, insane, or terrifying."

For someone who mocked and dismantled Nezumi's old belief that the one with something to protect always loses, why did they find any of this shocking? Were they no different with Sion? Did they believe Nezumi had no capability to change?

_"The person with something to protect always loses." I was such a stupid try-hard to take that seriously. Even Inukashi didn't live by that with their hounds._ He took a quick survey of the room and pictures of Ken, Sion, and their friends over the years. One picture on a shelf above awards given to the hotel had Shion - no white hair or snake - teaching Sion how to catch lightning bugs in midsummer. 

_How long have you changed your appearance, Shion? Are you ashamed or scared of something?_

"It's good you got a shiny new hotel, a profitable business, and a little kid with a home, a warm bed, and a family."

Ken was not impressed with the sudden change of topic. "And who's fault is it that you're lacking -"

"Mine."

"Huh?" They stared dumbfounded at Nezumi, as if they never expected such a blunt admission.  _Guess someone bet too much on me being a demon and lost the lottery._

"I could've had half of what you've earned had I stayed, but I didn't. I don't regret leaving, but it should have never taken me this long to return. If nothing else, I can face the consequences and have all of this behind everyone."

Ken frowned. "'If nothing else'?" Then the fury resurfaced, hotter than ever. "Your return isn't permanent then."

The numbness he felt from the slap returned. "It depends on what Shion wants."

Two hands seized the lapels of his jacket. Ken stood a good two heads shorter than Nezumi, but that did not stop them trying to smother the rat with guilt. A pointless and repetitive endeavor.

"If that's what you think, then you have no idea what Shion really wants. I would tell you to get the fuck out of here if I was him, but knowing that airhead, he's gonna -" They sighed and loosened their death grip slightly. "Are you gonna tell him everything then? How you showed up five years ago and ran off without a word? Oh, yeah, my cousin caught your scent. He remembered you told Shion to not save my kid during the Manhunt, and he cursed your name until he died from wounds protecting Sion from a Wasp. He cried all night with no one to carry his soul to a better place. There was no wind for days, and it was then I finally realized you were either dead or didn't give a fuck about any of those promises you kept."

Ken inhaled deeply and wiped their eyes with their sleeve. "You're a selfish asshole. An overrated, talentless hack of an actor who loves playing with people's hearts, but not as much as he loves himself and his own dick. If Shion weren't in the picture, I'd kill you."

This was a tragic sight. Moments of maturity and clarity undercut by years of resentment and anger over a single decision made nine years ago. When Nezumi and Ranko arrived in the middle of what replaced dilapidated pillars, moth-eaten furniture, and collapsed ceilings, Ken addressed his daughter first. They spoke with an earnestness that connected them to Ranko immediately. They showed the girl their dogs and introduced her to Sion. It was if Nezumi never existed until everyone but the adults remained, and Inukashi replaced Ken upon looking at him.

If even Karan had this duality as she lamented her inability to reach her son, then Shion...

_I did this to them. Rikiga. Inukashi. Karan. They can't work past their misery because I hurt them. I poisoned them, and they're slowly dying because I was a careless, selfish coward. No doubt Shion is... If I broke Shion, if I fatally wounded him..._ A metal instrument, shiny from tripped emergency sprinklers and held by trembling hands, was pointed at the temporal bone obscured by snow white hair.  _I just hope I'm not too late, Safu._

_What are you feeling, Shion? What do you really think of me? What have I done to you?_

Nezumi grabbed Ken's hands and gently made them let go of his clothes, simple and worn next to Ken's semi-formal business slacks. "Honestly, I'd kill me too. But since we're not in a world without Shion, I have to see him and let him decide what to do with me. I won't know how much damage I've done and what to do about it until then. Once all that's done and you still hate me, by all means, kill me."

Of course, Ken did not look convinced. They backed away from Nezumi and sighed. "What the hell? I wasn't -"

Before he could finish his thought, the door to the playroom opened. Two dogs, two children, and five mice flooded inside with concerned looks on their faces.

"Are you okay, mom?" Sion asked, looking at his mother and the stranger. "We heard yelling and didn't know if you were upset."

Laughing, Ken shook their head and ruffled their son's curly brown hair. "It'll all good, kiddo. Your mama just wrapped up a tricky business conversation with a rat."

"Papa?" Ranko pulled at the leg of Nezumi's pants. "Can I stay and play with Sion?"

He could not ignore the impatient stare of a host tired of the good graces their guest had exhausted. But rather than have Ranko worry about getting kicked out for what could be forever, he knelt down and graced the bridge of her nose with a kiss. Of course she sneezed as mother nature programmed her.

"Stop that, papa..." she whined.

"It's hard to resist when you flash those big brown eyes at me. Be careful or you'll steal hearts before you become like Psyche and steal the heart of the god of love."

Glaring, she blew a raspberry. When he lifted her in the air, she whined and pouted some more. Her face matched the color of her hair by the time Nezumi made her settle on his back. He didn't miss the millisecond of abject shock displayed on Ken's face.

"We still have an entire kingdom for you to explore. Besides -" One of the dogs sniffed Ranko's foot. "- you made a good enough impression for you to come back, right, Sion?"

Absolutely glowing, not unlike his namesake - _Shion, please come back..._ \- the boy turned to his mother. "Can they visit again soon, mom? Ranko didn't get to finish her story about how the mice haunted the school on Halloween! And Mika wants her to sing for the puppies!"

Ken's shoulders slumped as they heaved a childish sigh. "Fine! But her rat of a father stays a full kilometer from this neighborhood! If he passes that threshold, I want everyone on patrol to strike for his neck and his jewels, got it?" Both dogs present tilted their heads. "Don't give me that look! He's an omen, a demon! This guy ripped me off when my mama died! Do you know how many people he's killed to get what he wants?"

"Now, now," Nezumi scolded like a mother. "Please don't talk like that in front of the children, Inukashi."

"It's Ken! And don't change your voice like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like that!" They glared at a snickering Sion, for all the good that did. "Shit, how can you still sound like a demure girl at your age? I bet you're a creep when your little girl's not around!"

"I'm an actor. My little girl you insulted is Ranko. And language, Ken." Three fingers marked the offenses.

"ARGH! J-Just get out!" Ken threw a stress ball of the chibi mascot of No.6's futbol team that gently bonked Nezumi between the eyes. _Are they participating in anger management therapy? The gall and horror of such an unforeseen development!_  "You and your confusing flip-flopping are giving me a headache. Go spoil your princess somewhere else, knight-rat!"

Nezumi waved as he turned to the door. "Have fun schmoozing with the elite customers you only got through Rikiga's referrals! Ran and I have a play to catch." 

Hearing the girl hide her squeal in his shoulder made him grateful Ken could not see how easily he succumbed to the wishes of his his child. They would actually kill him if he stated they had more similarities than differences.

"Come back soon, Ranko!" Sion called through the door.

* * *

The theater sat along the river in Chronos, but one of Ken's dogs - "Nagi!" Ranko greeted the hound at the gated entrance to the hotel property - walked them up until they reached a bus stop for a line that led straight there. It stood across from the city's immigration resources center, the same four-story building where permits were processed when the West Block and No.6 were segregated. Much of its exterior defenses had been stripped away now that no one would protest or riot over the long wait times or twentieth application rejection. The center had a sunny feel to it, not unlike the daycare center Ranko attended. Hand-drawn pictures adorned the windows and street art covered every corner of the bland concrete walls.

The bus took them over a bridged superhighway connecting the West Block to the other districts. Through the window in the back of the vehicle, Ranko and Murasaki gawked at the driverless cars - new and repurposed antiques - skating along a flat surface of translucent construction far above neighborhoods, foundries, and greenhouses. Sometimes holographic stripes marred the shoulders or entire lanes to protect the people and robots wearing orange from oncoming traffic. 

Every route they took, regardless of transportation method, showed scenic views of human ingenuity and nature married to create something truly futuristic. Her father had read her a few science fiction books, and none of them showed a "future" of the mechanical and organic complementing each other on Earth. With the looks he gave to something in the world that caught his eye, her father probably did not imagine this world could produce something so incredible. 

When they got off at the last stop, a swarm of people crowded along the theater. Unusual for a 4:00pm showing, her father had said. Its architecture contrasted greatly from everything Ranko had seen of Chronos, but what caught her attention was its name.

"'Eve Theatre of Performing Arts', huh? What a natural..."

Her father may have scoffed, but Ranko did not miss his smile.

They cut through the crowd outside and inside when her father presented their electronic tickets. Despite the fancy murals, ivory flooring, and red velvet drapes, neither the staff nor the guests abided by a dress code or standard of appropriate attire. Only her hair, covered by a mint scarf that complemented her white sweater, would have broken an unspoken assumption held within the heads of browns and blacks.

Once they settled in their seats in the gallery, the play began without her father dropping a hint about what they were seeing. Everyone but Ink, Sunny, and Nelo sat quiet in the theater, waiting for the first act to begin.

The spotlight fell on a middle-aged man in white standing with a burnt helmet under his arm. He recalled the images he had drawn in his childhood, the adults who never understood his drawings, his life and death as a pilot. "I lived alone with no one to talk to, until I made a crash landing in the Sahara Desert six years ago..."

A downed plane and a young man came to life on stage as the old man slinked in the shadows, his voice never quite leaving the story entirely. Ranko could see them in the sands of the Sahara from what she recalled in picture books. Nothing to shield the weak from the piercing rays of the sun and the white-hot grains that burned anything that touched it. The man was stranded there for days with little water and nothing to keep him busy when he wasn't repairing his plane.

Until a golden-haired boy dressed in royal silks and a purple scarf appeared and said a simple request that made the audience - and her father laugh. She didn't understand why "Please draw me a sheep" would warrant laughter. There was no malice in any of it, but it took her years to understand that the audience's reaction didn't hold any ill will either.

The boy asked the pilot many questions. Some annoyed the latter with how random they were. Some left the pilot speechless, leaving room for his older self to say he only learned the answer much later than he or any living being should have. When the boy told stories, the stage became alight with colors and sounds of magic. Only music - gentle strings and woodwinds - played during these moments. Of his precious rose waiting for the prince on his home world, of his travels to planets where men obsessed over what that doesn’t matter, of the fox he tamed.

Ranko thought the play beautiful for it to speak in a language she had only heard her father use when he sang her to sleep or opened a book or boarded off the plane or danced on a stage. At some point his hand, gentle and warm, found hers on the armrest separating their seats. She wondered what he saw in the tale of the pilot and the little prince.

When the snake appeared, something cold settled in the pit of her stomach. She hated the creature. She hated that the little prince spoke to a dangerous animal as if it was a friend offering his poison as a gift. Even if he wanted to go back home to the rose he loved so much, there had to be another way. There had to be a way for him to return home but also be able to see the pilot again. The prince couldn't leave like that. The pilot would never understand it as anything but his friend choosing death.

The only sounds in the theater were from the prince and the pilot.

"It's all a bad dream, isn't it?" asked the pilot, holding his friend in his arms and weeping. "All this conversation with the snake and the meeting place and the star..."

The little prince smiled and dried his tears with his scarf. "If you love a flower that lives in a star, then it's good, at night, to look up at the sky. All the stars are blossoming. At night when you look at the stars, my small star will be one of them. All the stars will be your friends."

Ranko could hear a few members of the audience below and around them blowing their noses. She sensed no movement or reaction from her father.

Besides _The Happy Prince_ , her father never cried over any story he read. He never apologized for a tale that made Ranko upset, but he gave her all the time she needed to calm down. Even tales with happy endings have their tragedies, he had told her, "That's what makes the journey worthwhile in the end." If art imitated life, would her father say the same about his life on the day he will die? Ranko didn't want to think of someone dying in real life when she dreads the coming death of the little prince.

"When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it will be as if all the stars are laughing. The stars of others are silent, but yours can laugh!"

The more the prince spoke of the stars, Ranko could no longer catch what was happening on stage thanks to the clouds in her eyes. A little head nuzzled her cheek to mop the tears. She had been under countless when her father trekked the African wastes with her as an infant in his arms. Sometimes she remembers the frozen waters where they lay one of the mice to rest and she sang her first real song on her own. Not a summer passed in No.4 without sleeping under the consolations they tested each other on.

Stars, the memorials of ancient fires long burnt out, were meant to be shared with others like legends, myths, and truths. To do otherwise - to watch the stars alone and lock stories within one's heart - would sever the gazer from the threads of the universe. Ranko had asked her father if that was what death was like, but he gazed up to seek an impossible answer within diamond grains of stardust.

"And when you're consoled, you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And when you'll open your window, your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while looking up at the sky. They'll think you're crazy. But it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh..."

The pilot and the prince shared one last night together before they part. A paw scratched at Ranko's cheek.

The snake appeared from behind the ancient stone wall. It was too soon. There had to be another way for the prince to return home. Ranko wanted to scream at the prince and beg him not to leave the pilot alone to die lost in the desert. Then snake jumped for the prince's ankle.

A force yanked her from the dream of the prince falling and the pilot calling his name.

The hallway lights blinded her until the muted colors of twilight nursed her vision.

Her siblings shrieked and screamed around her.

A hand that comforted her was dragging her tangled, jelly legs through the streets.

It took her a minute to recognize her father's back. But it wasn't her father, not as she knew him. His breaths were frenzied, erratic, and desperate.

The soft beep of his voice call was quickly overtaken by other voices. Karan's, Ken's, and Rikiga's. She could only recognize one word, repeated over and over, in the symphony of hysterics.

The same word that thieved the little prince from the lost pilot.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Had he removed his jacket, he would felt utterly weak to Karan stroking his arm. A mother's love had a way to ignore all obstacles and uncomfortable things in the way. He only wished he experienced this under better circumstances. He wished he had stayed in this city so he would have deserved to truly know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would be happily stating that I'm not dead, but this chapter is a thing. What terrible timing, really. :(
> 
> Long story short, I plan to be working and living abroad for many moons, so updates may be even less frequent than before. Not knowing what my consistent schedule is like doesn't help. And while my internet connection does exist, it's not as strong and reliable as my internet back home. Please excuse my current living conditions for I'll do the best I can to keep this going.
> 
> Anywho, let the story continue...

"I have no sweet dew here that I can repay him with. The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in the world below."

\- Cáo Xuěqín, _Dream of the Red Chamber_

* * *

_"What's that?"_

_He remains focused even with Seldon, Nelo, and Haku climbing over his face and his book. A statue, but not quite._

_Grey irises catch her observing him, cool and calm like the early spring drizzle outside._

_"One of the best collections of Greek myths that survived the wars," he says as he turns a page. "A pity only No.4 has a copy of Ovid's works."_

_"Ovid?"_

_"The guy who wrote this." His fingers move to show the name and book title in English. "One of the great contributors to Latin literature along with Horace, Virgil, and Cicero. Ovid's_ Metamorphoses _is a bit melodramatic, but the Greeks practically invented drama and the Romans devoured it like it was going out of style. Where would humanity have gone without the original drama kings?"_

_She did not understand a single thing he said, but his passionate rant made her giggle. Thin bloodless lips that appear supple and full with the right shade of lipstick twitch into a half-smile._

_The book in his hands is worn and the pages yellow. If a author penned a book that survived long past his death, he must be great._ _She doesn't know how to say that yet, so she asks instead,"What's your favorite?"_

_"My favorite part?" She nods. "Too many to count. Although..." The tips of his fingers dance against the edges of paper. "There is one I used to read to get me ready before a play. One of my understudies gave me lip for it."_

_"G-Gave you lip?"_ Did papa lose his lips?

_"She mocked me, made fun of me."_

 What? Who made up that stupid story? _"Why?"_

_"She said I read the lines in that tale more naturally than from any of the best scripts." He rolls his eyes. "What would a drop-out with poor grammar know?" His words are mean, but his tone is soft._

_"Can you read it, papa?"_

_"As you wish, my lady."_

_He places the book down, brushes the clingy mice and rat off him, and throws himself off the bed. When Nelo and Ink "give him lip" he claims he needs room to be the star of the one-man performance._ _He's funny today. She loves it when he's funny. His stories are the best when he's funny._

_But his words are not funny. He falls to his knees and pretends to hold someone in his arms. His eyes are tender, flooded with bitting grief._

"'You are fallen in your prime defrauded of your youth, O Hyacinthus! I can see in your sad wound my own guilt, and you are my cause of grief and self-reproach. My own hand gave you death unmerited — I only can be charged with your destruction. What have I done wrong? Can it be called a fault to play with you? Should loving you be called a fault? And oh, that I might now give up my life for you! Or die with you! 

"'But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you. A new flower you shall arise, with markings on your petals, close imitation of my constant moans: and there shall come another to be linked with this new flower, a valiant hero shall be known by the same marks upon its petals.'"

_Her siblings chatter in applause. He only sees her not cheering and crawls to meet her on the floor._ _Thick drops of tears fall from her eyes._

_He sets her on his lap. She cries into his pale yellow shirt._ _He doesn't wear many colors. Only unhappy people wear dark clothes; that's why he never lets her wear black or grey._

_For a man of few colors, his true smiles, while rare, are brighter than the sunniest color in the rainbow._

_"Is it real?" she says when the sobs cease to constrict her throat._

_"Of course it's not real," he speaks into her hair. "I'm not Apollo, and I never loved someone like he did only to lose them. You lose your ability to separate reality from stories so easily, princess."_

_"B-But..."_

_"It's not real, Ran. It's not real."_

_When her tears stop and she receives a warm embrace, he releases his princess and returns to his book. The man maintains her attention and fascination. She continues to watch him read and doesn't know how to say what's on her mind._

_She learns long before she learned that Earth was once as vividly green and blue that every actor has that one performance - be it a character or emotion - he cannot completely sever his soul from and hide behind a mask._

* * *

It took a thousand lifetimes to return to Karan's bakery. Neighbors told confused customers to return in the morning in case the owner's wellbeing improved enough to open the shop. Some of the disheartened and worried called for her to get better as if the covered windows and locked door with a "closed" sign were her ears. To receive praises and wishes from strangers because of good food proved how incredible of a woman Karan was.

Nezumi weaved through the crowd and knocked his name in code. Ken opened the door enough to let him and Ranko slip inside and bolted the door shut behind them. In the dim light of the empty bakery, they looked like utterly spent. They had thrown all their vitriol at Nezumi earlier and had nothing further to add. Even if they wanted to they couldn't. It wasn't the time or place to play the blame game Inukashi would have played freely nine years ago.

"She's upstairs," they said, pointing upward.

A gentle tug at the sleeve of his jacket. The same side where his ID bracelet vibrated upon receiving the transmission. The public would probably catch wind of the news in two hours if they haven't figured it out yet. "What's wrong, papa?"

Her eyes were the color of the cinnamon buns they had with breakfast, of the slightly overbooked lattice that added a satisfying crunch with each mouthwatering bite of cherry cake. They pulled him out of years of loneliness and made him spare a criminal who tried to steal her from him. They took his breath away when the visage of an angel led him to her. That same person who...

He couldn't explain how his story took a sudden turn while the notification's words bore into the back of his eyes. It took everything to not collapse, to not scream, to not stop his writhing heart and pounding skull with his knife, to not run to the end of the universe and barter with whatever god(s) created everything. If not for his limbs and organs swimming in catecholamines, released by him running through the city, the news would have killed him in that theater.

But for now he had to ignore all of that. For Ranko's and Karan's sakes. "Stay here. I'll be back down in a few minutes."

"Papa?"

He winced over her dejected voice. Looking at her would only unmake him.

"I won't be long."

Sion emerged from the kitchen with a tray of soup, tea, and biscuits and placed it on one of the cafe tables. His mother told the boy and Ranko to stay downstairs with Nijirou and Chiko, Ken's nephew and his mate, while they take Nezumi upstairs. Sion obeyed and tried to calm Ranko, whose grip Nezumi slipped out of in a single motion. The girl continued to reach for Nezumi and begged him to tell her what's happening; he ignored the fleeting itch to run back to her and hold her in his arms.

 

_"You bastard! You fucking bastard! I ought to beat your ass to paste for how much you put Karan through, Eve! Even after all this time, empathy is just an alien concept to you, isn't it? You have no fucking clue what it's like to have your child taken away by monsters, hiding and starving in poverty for months, and seeing the child you finally reunited with work himself to the point he's a shell of a human being. How you became a parent before crawling back to Shion on your hands and knees and begging for forgiveness is a goddamned tragedy no theater could ever bring to life."_

 

Rikiga's rant was just the prelude to today, but so much he said were things Nezumi had already believed for years. All of this could have been avoided if he wasn't such a coward that day in May. Whatever overcame him should have never seized him in the first place. The fact he let that foreign feeling infect and take control of him proved he had far more weapons capable of destroying himself and everyone around him than he had knowledge or control over.

_Ranko, I can't be you father, not after this. I don't have anything to give you, and I don't have what it takes. I thought the world could break you more than I ever could, but I lied. The people we love inflict deeper wounds than any stranger._ _You deserve better, anything, anyone but me._

It took even longer to find and enter Karan's room, smaller than the guest room and full of old picture frames preserving snippets of her life. If Ken looked like shit, Karan looked like death. Time had had been kind to the woman; Nezumi had counted only four wrinkles on her face last night and not a single grey hair on her head. Now she had over a dozen wrinkles, and her hair shimmered like quicksilver in the moonlight. She had not taken off her apron, and her hair lay unkept and undone. Even with the dogs and mice cuddling her in her sleep, the woman winced like a child trapped in a nightmare.

Nezumi stepped forward but Ken held their arm out. "She fainted after our call. I haven't been able to reach her since she woke up."

He nodded solemnly. Ken must have seen something in Nezumi that compelled them to lay a gentle hand on his shoulder before leaving to return to the children.

Nezumi stood in a room full of reminders of what was left behind. A little shrine dedicated to Rou sat on a hand-carved table, punching a hole in the wall he built to contain everything. His knees trembled so much that he had to sit. He nearly collapsed on the edge of the bed with Karan's back to him. The dogs whimpered at his presence, but he felt how much they wanted him to be killed on the spot. His mice demanded it too, but the catatonic woman needing their warmth mattered now than settling scores.

Ink could not provide the same warmth as a living mouse, but Karan stroked it's head like it was an old friend. "...just like Tsukiyo... you look..."

The old name wounded him further. Tsukiyo must have passed away around the same time as either Cravat or Hamlet. Just when Nezumi had had it with death, more things reminded him and cut him until he bled out at constant rate that left him too anemic to live but too sustained to expire.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Nezumi stroked her arm. He may be a parent in the loosest sense, but he's not a mother. He'll never know what it's like to carry a budding life inside him and bring that realized life into the world who carries his genes, his hopes, and his fears. He's old enough to be her son, and she just lost - 

_No, spare a thought for_  him _later. Comfort her. Comfort her._

When he called her name, he was taken back to the mother and children who drowned trying to escape No.6 through the tunnels. He couldn't imagine what Karan was experiencing.

"...'I'll see you soon, mom.' ..." Her brittle voice made Nezumi's breath hitch. "...that's all... the last thing he told me..."

He opened his mouth but no words came out. He was the wrong person to comfort Karan, but he had nowhere else to go. There was nothing to do but let the woman pour out everything she kept in for years as a hopeless observer.

"I told him... 'Please take a vacation. Just once. If not for you then for me.' ...He smiled, but it wasn't a smile... He hasn't smiled in years... I thought he learned and began to take better care of himself... I had forgotten the hospital visits always followed the days he looked better..." A sniffle. "Did I take him to the wrong doctor? Why did I let him take so many medications? Why couldn't he talk to me? He knew I knew he missed Nezumi... so why? Why couldn't I reach him?"

Her grief tore down more of Nezumi's defenses, allowing the self-doubts and regrets he allowed to fester over the years to birth toxic spores and release them into his bloodstream. No vacations. Medications. Doctor visits. Hospitalizations. Lied to his mother. Hasn't smiled in years. Workaholic. Never in the moment. White hair, red snake, and violet eyes gone. He didn't believe the warning from the co-called "father". He didn't believe the politician from No.6 had brown hair, brown eyes, and no scar. He didn't believe Rikiga's and Ken's enraged rants. He didn't believe that Shion would change, that Shion worked every day at the expense of his mother, his friends, and himself.

He didn't want to believe the notification he received in the theater.

 

DECEASED FAMILY NOTICE:

Shion, male, age 25.  
Cause of Death: Drowning.  
Estimated Time of Death: 1:09 No.3/4:09 No.6 on March 8, 2027

Source: Kyakhta Memorial and Teaching Hospital. 14:38 No.3/17:38 No.6 on March 8, 2027 

 

But now, sitting by the woman's side, Nezumi couldn't not believe Shion's mother. A woman like her who raised her child alone, who pulled them both out of poverty by baking for a living, who never lost hope waiting for her son's return, who embraced his friends without question, and who supported everything her son did to purify a corrupt city had her child as an extension of herself. When her child hurts, so does the mother.

Thoughts he wanted to vocalize to express some level of attempted empathy clogged his throat, but Nezumi swallowed them. He wanted to comfort her, but doing so would break the last legs of his willpower to continue functioning. Worse, he didn't know how to comfort Shion or Ranko when they were his responsibility, let alone _Karan_.

 

_“Please, don’t go, Nezumi. This world means nothing to me without you.”_

 

And now every memory of Shion had become unreachable and evanescent. Forever out of reach.

_Shion... If my dying in that typhoon meant you can come home tomorrow, I never would have climbed that balcony. If it meant you'd still be alive eating your mama's pastries, growing up with Safu, becoming a beloved scientist, washing dogs, and reading to children, I should have never -_

Something small and warm gripped his hand. It stirred the wind carrying the voice of the woman who mourned someone like him. "Oh, Nezumi. Please don't blame yourself. This isn’t your fault." Karan spoke with a rebirth of certainty and conviction from her grief.

_But I’m the reason Shion killed himself._

With the dogs' support, she sat upright in bed and pulled Nezumi to her chest. He felt himself breaking further, surrounded by a familiar comforting blanket his body needed but lacked most of his life, but her arms helped to support the façade he needed to wear for a while longer.

"Shion's the bravest person I've ever known, but he wouldn't have had the strength to rebuild No.6 without you. You wouldn't have had the strength to raise Ranko without Shion either. The world is a brighter, better, gentler place because you saved each other. You both have lived and experienced so much because you cared for and learned from each other. Had you not met, had you not taught the other how to live, neither of you would have become the brave, kind men you are. I’m so proud of him, and I'm grateful for you being in Shion's life. I only wish I could have done more to ease his burden."

_Damn it. Damn it!_  A strained moan betrayed him as he clung to the woman. Face hidden from everything, he gave into the despair he had grown tired of fighting.  _You lost your son! Your only son I abandoned to fix this infected hell! Don't comfort me! Hate me! Kick me out! Leave me to rot! I killed your son!_

Had he removed his jacket, he would felt utterly weak to Karan stroking his arm. A mother's love had a way to ignore all obstacles and uncomfortable things in the way. He only wished he experienced this under better circumstances. He wished he had stayed in this city so he would have deserved to truly know it.

"I'm sorry you returned to this." Karan stroked his hair as he wept. "I would have loved for you and Shion to see each other one more time, but please never believe you came here for nothing. Don’t regret everything you did for him. No one in this world made my son as happy as you. Not even me. You made my son someone any mother would be proud of."

_But Shion is dead because of me._

_I killed him. He's gone. He's never coming back. I'll never know what happened between the day I left him and now. I'll never remember what his hair feels like or how warm his skin is against mine or how soft his lips are._

_I was too late, Safu. I was too late. I'm so sorry I was too late._

_He's gone, it's my fault he's gone gone gone gone gone my fault gone -_

Everything in the world muffled until he could no longer hear Karan’s voice. Nezumi lost sensation from his extremities to his head, full of nothing but the ghost of Shion's smiling face stained in blood and welcoming him to an empty, freezing home.

* * *

Her father never returned downstairs; Ken's family helped put her to bed instead. Dogs, while hot, big, happy, and excitable and kept her warm in bed with her siblings, could not replace the little, gentle affection of her father's namesake.

Even on nights without a story, he wished her goodnight. But he didn't that night.

_Where are you, papa? What's wrong, papa?_

It was as if her father disappeared, lost at sea and searching for a single star in the vast ocean of silver waves of light he will never reach while forgetting to look back to what he did have but left on the shore a lifetime behind him.

* * *

_"I don't know how, but without hesitation I killed another human being."_

_Purple meets grey as they did countless times before in light and darkness, but a primal cold crept up his spine. There is a thick haze disrupting any effective communication between them._

What do I have to tell him? How do I reach him?

_A silver instrument is pointed at_ his _skull. 155mm length, 460g weight, 5.4-mm diameter barrel, 8 equipped shots. He wishes he read those anatomy books more thoroughly to know if a bullet would deal a critical and fatal blow._

How many shots are left?

_"You once said No.6 and I are the same. I said you were wrong, but... maybe you were right all along. I am just like No.6. It doesn't matter why I did it... I coldly, cruelly ripped out the life out of another man. I_ killed _him."_

He _'s changed. He begged_ him _to not change. He prayed_ he _wouldn't ever change. He believed_ him _incapable of murder. It's not in_ him _to do so._

_"Nezumi..."_

His _lips twist into a warped, miserable smile._

Shion?! Why are you looking at me like that?!

_Shion's finger twitches against the trigger._

_"Thank you, Nezumi. You've meant the world to me. I'm sorry I failed you."_

_"STOP!!"_

_Sparks of red fireworks fly into and burn his eyes a millisecond before he lunges forward._

_A white angel crumbles to the floor with his wings torn off. Its soul and the map of the facility leak from the wound and mix with blood and cranial fluids._

_His knees fail. Steel crushes his ribs, his heart, his lungs._

_No.6, revenge, destruction mean nothing anymore._

_A baker will never see her son again. A girl will never see her childhood friend again. A dogkeeper and their family will never have company again. A former journalist will never protect his crush's child again. Three mice will never be read to awkwardly but sweetly again._

_A rat will never know compassion and warmth from another human being again._

I should have apologized, not you. I should have never brought you here.

_If hands of the dead grab him from the bleeding life-force that kept Shion alive, Nezumi doesn't feel them. They cover his eyes, but he lost his vision to the image of two corundum gems having lost their luster. They cover his ears, but the echo of the gunshot already muted everything. They strangle his neck, but he feels nothing but the cries tearing his throat. He screams even when he stops breathing._

Don't leave me, Shion. I can't live without you.

* * *

She wanted someone to tell her what was happening.

With Karan still in her bedroom, the cafe did not open in the morning. With the exception of her siblings, Ranko slept in the guest bed alone, waking every so often throughout the night to Ken yelling at either her father or someone else. Her father maintained distance from her, filling the girl with a panic close to surpassing the day he passed out before her eyes.

Sion tried to cheer her up with stories and games he played with the dogs and his friends from school, but Ranko kept her eyes pealed for any sign of her father. Seldon and Virga consoled Mocha and Murasaki, unable to handle the heavy sadness that fell upon the adults. He would not admit until they were much older that Sion shared Ranko's anxieties because no one told him anything either.

By 10:00, Ken told Sion and Ranko to spend some time outside while the adults were “busy”. The boy tried to show Ranko some of his favorite places around the city, including an aquarium in northeastern Chronos Shion gave him tickets to enter on opening day three years ago. When the dour look on her face didn’t lessen, even with Snow and Haku nuzzling a sensitive spot on her neck, he let out a big smile and talked up the place like it was the greatest place on earth. Even if it wasn't true, getting their minds off distressing things until their parents could regain a sense of balance mattered the most.

Bit by bit Ranko's mood slowly improved as they walked past creatures she had never seen before. No.6 had the technology to help No.5’s efforts to clean and purify the Pacific Ocean, and No.5 repayed them by allowing No.6 to keep some of the creatures they kept in their refuge for educational purposes. An instinctive chill creeped up her spine every time she was near water, and she knew nothing of what life existed beneath the clear, blue, green, or brown surface that made up over 70% of the planet.

As pretty as they were, the jellyfish, octopi, and squids scared her the most. Several of the creatures shared the colors of her multicolored orb, but they bore stringy, clingy arms that groped, strangled, and shocked whatever it pleased. Sion laughed when she hugged him, buried her face in his sweatshirt, and complained about how anyone could find such monsters cool but cute, fluffy mice and rats were disgusting. Snow, Haku, and Nelo expressed their gratitude by nuzzling her beneath layers of clothes that shielded them. Ko, an albino mouse that hid in Sion's hood, praised Ranko as well.

“If we lived in water, people might be scared of them too,” Sion said when they took a moment to sit on a bench in an empty domed room inside a tank full of coral reef plantlife and fish. “I heard there’s a huge squid living at the bottom of the ocean that’s been seen only twice. The aliens in manga and anime look more real than that thing.”

Ranko shivered, clearing the image her mind conjured of what could possibly be worse than the Suns or Wasps or the rainbow monsters three rooms away.

“So you’ve never read a book about the ocean before?” Ranko shook her head. “Uncle Shion gave me a lot of science books to read since I was a baby. But no matter how hard he tries, I’m bad at literature. Hey -” he turned to face her. “- I can teach you science and you can teach me book stuff! We’ll be the smartest kids in the world!”

For a second the idea seemed attractive. Ranko didn’t hate school, but few things about the institution kept her interest for more than five seconds. Without natural music and tangible environments that added to lessons, she learned little from imitations and holograms. Worse, she rarely had a teacher who loved the topics they taught, children, and learning like it was instilled in them from birth.

But between seeing real sea life and listening to Sion recite facts with the same confidence as Ranko sang, she remembered her father going up the stairs to be swallowed by the same force that dimmed the spirit that made him her father. It was 1:36pm and no one contacted her or Sion about Shion. _Where are you, Shion? Papa’s sad without you._

Sion blushed and muttered about how dumb his idea was. “Everyone says I’m more like my uncle than my mom. Besides not being that good with literature, I don’t know why.”

That man seemed impossible to not talk about. She hated waiting for him, but all she had were secondhand stories of him from his friends, his mother, and Ranko’s father. As the topic was unavoidable, Ranko asked the boy who shared his name, “What's Shion like?”

Brown eyes sparkled and the memory of his embarrassment vanished. “Uncle is really, really smart! He’s got a photographic memory and can remember everything he reads! Lots of people like him because he's nice and wants what's best for everyone. He's patient with people who don't like him, but uncle will call out someone if their ideas are stupid or evil. He believes people are born good and will protect anyone, even a stranger, without thinking twice. But he’s a little silly sometimes. He thought life underwater was peaceful. Then we saw two sharks fight over food here, and he changed his mind. He even pouted like a kid! And when he talked about genetics with my biology class, he got excited over pictures of baby bats and forgot what he said!”

Ranko giggled. From the pictures she saw, Shion looked like someone who’d get excited over little things he liked and that would steal his attention from everything else. She never saw a picture of him smiling, but from how her father spoke of him, she knew it’d be an endearing sight. “Papa’s silly too. He talked to Mocha and Murasaki a lot when they were babies. He said mice are born blind and can’t see. He wanted them to know his voice.”

“Uncle told me that too!” Ko climbed onto his shoulder and squeaked her agreement. "He let me see and care for Virga and Oscar's pups sometimes. When he saw how much Ko liked me, he convinced mom to let me keep her. 'She likes your voice the most,' he said." The mouse chirped, curling her body against Sion's neck.

How such adorable, affectionate, and intelligent critters like mice and rats could ever be considered vermin would never cease to baffle Ranko.

Sion bit his cheek, but it did not stop the smile from reaching his eyes. “Some of my friends were scared of animals, but uncle made them cool or cute. Hana hated lizards, but now she carries Moriki everywhere. Lots of adults are too busy to make the world less scary for kids, but not Uncle Shion. I wish more people were like him."

While she loved how much the boy showered his "uncle" with affection and praise, impatience within Ranko reached a boiling point. She didn't want to wait anymore. He was supposed to return to No.6. He and her father would meet again for the first time in almost a decade. She wanted to know how they'd react upon seeing each other. Would they hug? Cry? Smile? Would they fight like boys do when they don't know any other way to express themselves? Were they like the two fathers of one of the other daycare kids in No.4? Would they kiss like lovers do at the end of a story when they earned their happily ever after? Who were Shion and her father to each other? 

_Where are you, Shion? Papa needs you. I wanna meet you. Why aren't you here now? Why is everyone sad? When will you be home?_

"Are you okay, Ranko?" her new friend asked, pulling her out of her increasingly panicked thoughts. She didn't know at the time, but he mirrored her nervousness beneath his collected but worried expression.

“Why is papa sad?” she finally asked, searching Sion’s eyes for the answer.

He looked a bit more uncomfortable than before at first, but Sion sounded just like his mother when he said, “I think something happened to Uncle Shion. Mom woudn’t tell me what it is.”

Ranko’s blood went cold and panic rushed through her. “What? Why? Is Shion okay? Is he coming?”

“O-Of course he is! We just gotta wait a bit until then! His plane might be late. My mom and your dad might be talking to him right now trying to figure out how to get him back home. The weather might be acting up for all we know, right?”

Sion let out a weak, unconvincing chuckle, but enough of what he said sounded plausible enough to calm Ranko for a short period of time. Long enough to travel from Chronos all the way over to the outskirts of the West Block. Transportation within No.6 cost considerably less than No.4 with much cleaner and smoother service, a near impossibility Ranko was too young to understand for many years to come. She and Sion went far enough that they reached the edge of habitability, where trees and grass grew brittle and sparse in browns and yellow-greens, save a handful of stubborn cherry blossoms atop a hill to the southwest.

The children and rodents ventured along a quiet, clear stream that led to an abandoned and rusted playground. Cement stairs led to nowhere and mounds of debris and junk from another era had not been touched in decades. The sight saddened Ranko, who had known the vast emptiness of the wastelands and the meticulous designs of the cities, but not the forgotten skeletons of the past. Somewhere past the slide was a young willow tree, and at its foot were small mounds where Snow, Nelo, and Ko darted to and squeaked tender laments. Even Sion bowed when he passed the lone tree with knotted bark and beaded, leafy branches.

Without a single word spoken, Ranko felt the memories of this place. She could see this playground buried beneath snow and two laughing boys throwing snowballs at and tackling each other before the gusts of a blizzard arrive to trap them underground for days. Something tickled the back of her neck as these images emerged in her mind without any prompt or suggestion. Somehow she just knew this place had a story near to her heart.

Sion led her behind piles of brick obscuring a stairwell leading into the earth. The rat and mice sprinted forward and chattered obnoxiously at their slow human companions. Ranko and Sion slowed down to let their eyes adjust to the darkness of the musky underground corridor with heavy doors and bolts to protect whatever sought refuge behind them.

They stopped at one with a modern lock Sion had a key for in his pocket. "This is the only secret uncle keeps safe. He's too busy, so only me, Rico, and Kalan know about it. We keep it safe for him."

"What is it?" Ranko was about to ask until a tsunami of old, preserved paper flooded his nostrils.

From floor to ceiling, on shelves and a small table and a worn couch, books of every shape, size, and thickness filled a room the size of a second-story bathroom in a suburban family home. A thin heater sat unused, but heat circulated the tiny space from an addition she could not see. A piano sat polished and surrounded by sheets of music Ranko recognized only by name from her father's discussions of art and music and performance. Lamps hung from the ceiling and let out a warm orange glow missing only the gentle movements of candlelight. A mat kept their shoes as Sion led Ranko through the bookshelves, showed her his favorite books, and led her to the door to a fully functional and well-maintained bathroom hiding in a corner.

Before he even said it, as she sat on the simple iron-framed bed surrounded by doggy-tagged copies of every story she grew up hearing and her siblings sitting eagerly on the covers of books they had never seen before, Ranko knew this bunker was her father's and Shion's home.

They were farther from her than they had ever been, and yet she had never felt so close to either man in her life.

* * *

The story broke out twenty-six hours later than he predicted, but it was no less tone-deaf with flashing lights and buzzing voices surrounded Karan's bakery. He didn't want to leave her alone to hide from gossiping monsters, but she forced the keys in his hands and ordered him to go to the apartment mere minutes from the Moondrop. The shadows shielded him, but a thin thread pulled him forward to empty rooms with sparse furniture but the basics to survive and bedding for two other mice Shion kept.

The two critters - a two-year old white-and-brown mouse and a eleven-month old grape-eyed grey mouse - greeted Seldon, Ink, and Sunny with muted cheer. Upon seeing Nezumi, brown flashed its teeth at him while grey yelled at him until he followed it into a specific room. Shion's bedroom.

Besides some pictures of his childhood, his mother, and Safu and her grandmother, absolutely no color marred the apartment. Everything was sterile white or jet black. No clutter, no dust, no signs of life or personality marked what was clearly not a home. Anything human was removed, much like the scar, eyes, and hair that made Shion superficially distinct from others. The place had only four rooms, a modest two-bedroom and one-bath for the Vice President of No.6, but it felt like a mansion with nothing to fill the obvious void that made the wasteland look like an overcrowded concert hall.

The bedroom had nothing of note but a small machine sitting on the glass bedside table closest to the sheer-curtained floor-to-ceiling window. A cobalt blue light flickered on and off in regular intervals; the grey and black mouse sat beside it and Ink kept its eyes on Nezumi, expecting him to investigate lest his entire face be chewed off. The human had no reason not to, given his only other option was to simply collapse and wait for the ground to open up and drag him into the center of the planet to boil and cook for an eternity.

He sat on the bed and lifted a thin metal band from the charging station that looked not unlike an ID bracelet. No.6 citizens moved to communication chips after the old city fell, but the technology persisted in home-based technology and home recording devices. Upon pressing the power button, a hologram projected a locked screen and asked for a password. The brown mouse chattered to Ink, who climbed onto his master's wrist and prodded the device with his paws until Nezumi's bracelet notified that it was receiving about 28GB of video recordings.

For the first time since he received the notification, he felt a tinge of the hope that terrified him when he arrived. Maybe, just maybe, Shion left a trace of himself behind that could explain everything. Maybe the truth of everything would come to light. Maybe a fraction of whatever Shion locked inside himself from his friends, his coworkers, the world, and his mother was in these videos. Maybe he saved something just for Nezumi and Nezumi alone.

But too many stories have characters obsess over something beyond their control and never become satisfied, even when they search until the moment they croak on their deathbed. Nezumi mocked those characters for being foolish and stupid, but here he was, clinging to a pointless, useless hope that Shion didn't leave this world for no reason. That he left something behind for Nezumi that explained why he died. Even if he learns nothing, he had to search anyway. To do otherwise would to give up completely on living without knowing if it truly was the end of the line.

Once his ID bracelet downloaded all the videos, the first one played automatically. What Nezumi saw brought everything he buried and hid to the surface. Between the tears that blinded him and the sobs that deafened him, there was a boy with white hair, red-purple eyes, and the red snake that coiled around his neck and cheek.

"Hi, Nezumi."

_Shion._ He nearly broke like paper-thin glass to concrete knowing how long it had been since he heard that voice address him directly.

"I don't know when or if you ever see this, but I think it's worth trying to keep track of how things have been for me. We both know I'm no storyteller, so a boring diary is the best I can do. My doctor says it's healthy to have an outlet to let out what you carry with you throughout the day. Honestly, I didn't want to see a therapist, but mom insisted. Maybe things will... I don't know. We'll see if I keep this up.

"Today is June 24, 2019. Last night No.6 had its first successful election after a lot of angry riots prevented the last seven but everyone will forget about ten years from now. I'll try not to have every entry be about work." Shion laughed. He had no idea how much he missed that sound until Nezumi heard it reach his ears after so long. "Personal drama and relationship intrigue are more your thing anyway. There's not much of it in politics right now with the city almost always on fire. It's a challenge, but I think we can get through this. We have to, for everyone's sake if humanity is to recover after the wars and Elyurias' wrath.

"Even with your impossible high standards, I hope I can make you proud, Nezumi. I hope you're alright out there. I wish there was some way to contact you and see you're okay. I -" Shion's voice cracked and his smile, soft and steady, faltered as his gaze fell to his lap for a second. " - I miss you so much, but I'll wait for you, no matter how long it takes. No matter how much it..." He shakes his head and the smile returns. "I know I won't be able to remember everything once we meet again, so take these videos as snapshots of my life rebuilding No.6. Either you'll be entertained or bored. I've made a bet over what your reaction would be to this, but you'll have to come back if you want to know the answer.

"Anyway, I'll see you next time, I guess. Nezumi, I-" Shion coughed and cleared his throat. "Just be safe."

The screen went dark. Too short. It was too short, but Nezumi could not stop the swelling pain in his chest, in his joints, in his throat. Everywhere hurt. Dozens of videos documented many moments over the past nine years, and Nezumi had no idea where to start. When did Shion change? Was it gradual or sudden? What was his last video? Did he record anything he regretted? How many videos did he delete?

Small, delicate nibbles from five critters sobered him like a bucket of ice water was poured over his head. Melancholy weaved between them. Even Ink looked at him with no hint of aggression.

He had time to piece through the questions and mysteries, even if most of them never had an answer or revelation, but he had no other alternative. Nezumi had nothing left of Shion but outdated family photos, a video diary, four unfortunately named mice, and six months of muddied, fleeting memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a slightly lighter note, the creature Sion mentioned is a bigfin squid. It’s a creepy-looking long-legged fucker we’ve apparently never seen in the adult stage. The theme to ‘The X-Files’ plays in my head whenever I see a picture of that fantastically horrific abomination. >.<
> 
> On another other note, I still listen to music while I write. There are five songs I can list now that have been constants as I planned, drafted, and wrote scenes for this fic:
> 
> 1\. "This Is Gospel" by Panic! At the Disco  
> 2\. "Nuclear Seasons" by Charli XCX  
> 3\. "Lethean" by Katatonia  
> 4\. "Home" by Framing Hanley  
> 5\. "In My Heaven" by Negative
> 
> There is a sixth song that's very nostalgic for me as a young 90s kid, but I'll save it for later.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter how he felt about him now, no matter how much he changed since that spring morning nine years ago, Nezumi needed Shion. He needed him to overwhelm his five senses to feel right again. He needed to be recalibrated to finally be free to be who he should be for himself and for Ranko.

"A shadow flits before me,  
Not thou, but like to thee:  
Ah Christ, that it were possible  
For one short hour to see  
The souls we loved, that they may tell us  
What and where they be!"

\- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Maud; A Monodrama"

* * *

A cerulean sky, crystal clear, had unfolded over a small clearing at the edge of the northern district. Cherry blossoms flourished on the sparse, rocky stretch of land overlooking the city below, still dazed and confused after the destruction of the wall and the illusion of utopia.

Two boys had their backs to what they wrought. One had his eyes set to the horizon with a knapsack on his back, loose strands of black hair tickling his face, and two mice buried in his clothes to be spared from windchill. No environment or condition existed in which Nezumi wasn't out of place or not beautiful, but under the weeping cherry blossoms he was exceptionally stunning, yet fleeting.

"You're... you're really going..." The second boy said. His mouth could have been stuffed with nails and it would hurt less.

"I have to," Nezumi replied.

"When are you coming back?"

His nostrils flare from a light snort. "Coming back to where? There's nowhere for me to return to."

 _"Nowhere?" Do you really believe that, Nezumi? After everything?_ Shion thought he knew the answer, but he needed to ask anyway. "Can't I come with you?"

Nezumi shook his head firmly. His eyes were undiscovered gems, dull in the darkness of a cavern. "We're different from each other; I'm a wanderer, and you're a settler. That's what it all boils down to. You should know by now that when two people are incompatible, they can't live together. There's no harmony between opposites, Shion."

When Nezumi broke their eye contact to observe the slain monster that haunted him for twelve years, Shion wanted to punch him to get his attention back. Once more, No.6 mattered more to Nezumi than the person who gave up so much of his life to ensure his companion lived. Each of them had fought armed soldiers for the other. Both did amateur procedures to save the other from death. Both had considered - if not truly acted on - giving up his life to protect the other.

But people don't change in six months; to believe and hope otherwise would be foolish and infantile. He was certain Nezumi, ever the cynic, would say that among other words of skepticism that had some merit in survival. Still, Shion's heart ached to see Nezumi mere moments away from fading into the distance with no scheduled return. He had dreaded this day would come, and no amount of preparartion averted the inevitable tears he denied his burning eyes producing.

"I'm afraid of you." Their eyes met again, but Nezumi's expression was softer, yet nowhere near enough to display anything resembling doubt, remorse, or sadness. "You're a mystery to me. One minute you have the power to tame a rioting crowd with mere words, and the next you cry like a girl. You can be ruthless, courageous, kind, and noble all at once. I don't understand how that's possible, and it scares me."

They had had this conversation before a thousand times. Humans are complex walking contradictions in which every law and no law of nature may apply to explain who and what they are. For one as well-read as Nezumi, he sure was ornery in his obtuseness. Then his snide comment about considering a return visit for his mom's baked goods should have been a slap in the face that finally broke whatever pervasive hold Nezumi had over Shion's heart. The grip only tightened.

He wanted them to return to the bunker and live through the entirety of summer. Damn the dehydration, the constant sweating, and no cold water showers. It shouldn't have been too much to ask for a simple, silly wish to come true. He wanted to return home every night to find Nezumi with a dog-tagged book in his hands or a pot of Macbeth soup on the stove or a script for the latest play rehearsal. Damn it if he reread half his library a dozen times, if the taste of the soup got old, or if the sappy melodramas were for middle-aged housewives. It shouldn't have been too much to ask to not be alone.

Having spent most of his life in an isolated bubble where he had everything and nothing, Shion never knew how much he wanted anything or anyone until he met Nezumi. He disappeared for a time and Shion waited, staring out windows to spot any sign that he survived and found shelter from whatever hunted him. Then their lives crossed again, disorienting and confusing them, tangling them in threads they never realized they had been bound by until something tried to pull them apart.

He didn't imagine Nezumi was what made separation more excruciating than dying.

Shion didn't remember when he clutched Nezumi's arm with both hands or how long he had been crying, but he had one last chance to convince him that his feelings and words were real. Not knowing if the broken pieces can fall back in place hurt more than breaking the vase in the first place.

"Please, don't go, Nezumi." Shion choked, blurry eyes to the ground. "This world means nothing to me without you."

Shion wanted to say so much more if he had all the time in the world. He wanted Nezumi to know he loved him. How he loved no one else as much and as deeply as he loved him. How he loved him from the moment he looked into his strong, stormy grey eyes in the typhoon. How he loved him so much that he didn't act upon any of the dreams and temptations he came to face on a weekly then daily basis. How he swallowed the only retort he could have made every time Nezumi teased him about his lack of experience with women. How he barely slept last night after he lost his senses to his damned adolescent hormones.

_"There's no harmony in opposites?" But can't opposites attract? Aren't too alike things the ones that are incompatible because they can't learn anything new from each other? And even if we were, I don't care if we're incompatible. Even if you never felt the same and only pretended for the sake of my feelings, don't go so far away that I can't reach you. I can't bear not knowing where you are if something happens to you -_

A finger hooked his chin, forcing Shion to drown in those eyes he wanted to lock away in his heart for safekeeping if he never sees them again. Thankfully, they were tender and glistening in spite of his voice of a reprimanding mother. Shion's stomach never stopped flipping under the gaze of this amazing, beautiful, intelligent, gifted boy.

"My, what a stubborn child. Won't you act your age?"

"Nezumi, I'm serious. I really - !"

The ground disappeared beneath Shion's feet with only Nezumi's lips on his and hands caressing his face to keep him from falling. So tender and gentle it almost wasn't Nezumi, his heart sank to his navel and his tears fell faster and harder than ever. Maybe Nezumi pitied Shion for stopping them from going too far last night. Maybe he pitied Shion for losing his elite status, his best friend, his innocence, and nearly being torn away from his mother, all within a few years. Maybe Nezumi had so much he wanted to tell Shion too, but felt a kiss that left them utterly breathless was the most efficient and effective way to convey his thoughts.

Refusing to let this mean goodbye, Shion leaned back in. Nezumi started but melded his lips in a heartbeat to overlap with Shion's like two pieces of a puzzle fitting perfectly. Shion didn't care if he didn't learn anything. This was punishment for Nezumi running away without a valid reason. If he felt nothing for Shion, he should have just said so. If all of the teasing about lack of romantic and sexual experience and all the drama over kinds and timing of kisses led to Nezumi not caring at all, then he was a cruel monster for looking down on and using Shion for... amusement? Self-assurance? Nothing at all?

If Nezumi could be cruel, then Shion could be too for once. A self-composed master of restraint should have never let his Highness catch him off guard with a "goodnight" kiss or learn of his scar's hypersensitivity. Shion will never forget how Nezumi melted beneath his touch, how he moaned Shion's name with abandon in the crook of his neck, and how their clothes and better judgments protected their arousals enough from doing anything too hasty in heat. Exchanging soft sighs were nowhere close to ecstatic moans, but Shion cherished this moment of preserving everything about Nezumi in his memories.

When they finally parted, Nezumi pressed their foreheads together and wiped away Shion's tears with his thumbs. His fingers tangled in the hair at the base of Shion's head and needy breaths filling the others' lungs, the unflappable actor was too close to breaking character. His last words were a simple vow whispered against his companion's reddened lips: "Reunion will come, Shion."

After a thousand years of learning of life, the world, and himself in six short months, Nezumi let go. As Tsukiyo climbed onto Shion's shoulder, Nezumi stole one last look at the boy who he owed so much, and turned his back on the past. Hamlet and Cravat poked out from the superfibre cloth and chirped their goodbyes until their companions became too small to be seen. True to his intentions, Nezumi never glanced back once. The boy had greater strength of heart and character than Orpheus. Nothing could stop or tame the wind, not even Shion. Maybe it was simpler and better that way.

He stayed in that clearing, swollen lips cold, young heart heavy, and overstimulated nerve endings aching for sensations no one would ever stir but the one who walked away.

"Nezumi..."

_I never learned your real name. But I guess it doesn't matter. You'll always be Nezumi, my companion, my partner. I'll keep waiting for you, no matter how many years pass or how old I become. Our paths will cross again someday, and I won't let you go so easily._

Until then, he had a city to return to that needed his help. Shion let the sun's rays shower him after Nezumi had long vanished into the wastelands beyond No.6 and turned back before dusk with his memories and Tsukiyo to keep him loyal and true to the path ahead.

* * *

A notification overrode the sleep functions of his ID bracelet. The message, long, verbose, and carefully constructed had two words in the headline that he had to have hallucinated from the dying throes of the nap he didn't remember taking. If not, then he had finally lost his mind. There was no other explanation.

If it were true, then Not-Rikiga apparently had cleaned up his act enough to not send spam through the underground channel he used with Kuru. The doctor didn't trust him enough, and for good reason. The journalist had it in for him since he made the obvious remark about having the scent of a bulldog for a juicy story. Now that he returned to his prime after twenty years of scraping by with dirty magazines, Rikiga should have had no business to stoop to this level of cruelty.

Nezumi closed the message his mind crafted to torment him further. He entered the bathroom to splash water in his face. The spotless rectangular mirror contrasted with the soft curves of the used but well-maintained utilities and accessories in the small room. Awake at last, he returned to his new hidy hole and replayed the last recording he watched before he blacked out.

Then four mice threatened to skin him slowly, centimeter by centimeter. Unable to care, he ignored them.

Then Karan called.

* * *

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, along with a glass of red wine, a balanced nutritional diet, regular exercise, biannual checkups, a consistent body temperature, and a positive outlook on life. He followed much of those recommendations in his own way: apples from Ikue's family orchid, the authentic meals served in the cafeteria and in every public sector building, biking to work every day, keeping all windows shut and locked, and visits to his therapist every other Friday. He found no use in consuming a sip of alcohol, and his regular busy schedule kept him focused on the tasks at hand. Everyone had their own way to navigate through life, and his worked well for him. The panoramic photographs of the city hanging on the walls of his office reminded him how much had changed over the years. A big picture perspective inspired all who entered his office to keep moving forward in spite of all obstacles.

The prominent politician paced around the glass coffee table and between two off-white leather couches with a tablet in one hand and a half-eaten banana in the other. Hundreds of unread messages flooded his inbox from his fellow members of the People's Committee to other city-states' diplomats and agents from the international organizations. While seventy percent of the notices had "EMERGENCY" or "PLEASE READ ASAP" or "URGENT REPLY REQUESTED" in the headers, the program run by the Grandmother's repurposed algorithms consolidated duplicates, deleted spam, and sorted through every employee's mail based on actual priority to improve efficiency. By 2023 only 0.734% of messages were misplaced or mis-categorized; last year's tech audit confirmed the error rate dropped below 0.00001%. Such a low rate reduced the number of emails and IMs he received to three hundred every ten minutes.

He needed to focus right now, and he was grateful for having no distractions. Their lawyers would soon arrive to the conference room on the twelfth floor to discuss the lawsuits that stole time and resources away from the beautification project in northeast Lost Town and the Wasps' tunnel network investigation in Chronos. Just as the economy recovered after a brief but turbulent recession, five cases between the government and local businesses or the international community tied the People's Committee's hands once more. The man had no experience in law, but Legal Consultant Ikue, who took the helm of two of the five cases, requested he review her notes before the meeting. She had no obligation to seek his approval; she knew how much he trusted her judgment. He only did it as a favor to a friend. Getting him away from the return of the Great Infrastructure Budget Debate of 2027 in the group chat platform was a happy bonus.

He attached a few notes to the document before submitting it to Ikue and sat on the grey leather couch to finish his "lunch". The tablet continued to flash with every new notification on the glass coffee table between a hardcover almanac and the physical signed edition of Project Rediscover with the 2025 amendment. The man pulled an handkerchief from his breast pocket to dry his hands and pick any piece of banana that fell on his suit. He was no sloppy eater, but his coworkers recommended he check himself in the mirror every chance he could lest he wear clothes with noticeable smudges glowing like neon signs all day by accident.

After tossing the banana peal, his communication chip vibrated in his pant pocket, and he went to pour a packet of powder in a half-glass glass of water at 15:30 sharp. The meeting had already started, but he could afford to be "fashionably" late in an unimpressive black suit and clip-on tie.

For as long as he worked in the government, many fellow members and subordinates always addressed him with reverence when he passed them in the hallway or elevator. People like Senior Members Morishige and Haru, who have worked for the committee with him from the beginning, he had long dropped the formalities, choosing to nod or smile if they crossed paths. Now the halls were mostly empty with the Urban Agriculture and Education subcommittees having their monthly meetings at the same time. Even then, a few interns from college and university gathering paper for the copy room bowed as he passed.

Then he had to spend five floors in the elevator with Senior Payroll Accountant Ji-Min, a hyperactive bunny on sugar 24/7 who crashed every social event with elaborate pranks but always ensured everyone in the government got paid on time, even if all power in No.6 went out for two months.

The monitor displayed a news report about No.2's satellites detecting a 9.4 earthquake in the American-Canadian Sea two hours ago. "Didn't that happen where Yellowstone used to be?" Ji-Min asked, loudly chewing No.5-imported Baya Bubblegum.

He nodded, catching the probable tsunami alert for No.5 and No.6. "The caldera may be gone, but enough molten rock has built up that it has been scheduled for an eruption or earthquake since the 2001 Romanov addition to the Heinrich Report. We'll have to see how much the subaqueous supervolcano will impact the chemical composition and ecological environment of the sea."

The woman made an affirmative sound and pushed her lime-green sparkled glasses to the bridge of her nose. "It almost sounds like you want to get your hands in the weeds, Vice President."

"Maybe after I find my way out of the ten haystacks full of needles to keep the city afloat," he replied dryly. The elevator stopped on his floor. "Enjoy game night at Hyaku-do."

"Always do! And don't stay too late, sir!"

He waved back to her before the elevator doors closed.

Much of the city was obscured by the large banners covering the top of Moondrop, but the extra colors gave the twelfth and topmost accessible floor the nickname "Rainbow Peak". Planned renovations to alter the overall structure of the building were shelved indefinitely until the city-state stabilized. The integrity of No.6's government mattered more than if the seat of power looked like a cross between a beehive and a pustule. The populous liked it more with the district flags, and its cry now only blared when bad weather or a predicted earthquake was coming.

The man weaved through the hallways, layered upon each other like the skin of an onion, until he approached the sliding doors of the Sapporo Conference Room. All who were present paused their meeting to bow and greet the Vice President, particularly the green-eyed woman presenting the holographic slideshow over view of the cases and grinning from ear-to-ear. "Thank you for coming, boss."

"Ikue!" hissed Member Shujiao, the oldest elected official in years lived but the youngest in years served.

The Vice President waved his hand. "Relax, everyone. Please continue as if I didn't interrupt."

The lawyers nodded in agreement and eyed Ikue to continue. Member Shujiao scoffed and rolled her eyes while her assistant intern wrote notes of the meeting on her behalf. Of eleven people in the room, four scribed relevant notes for their bosses. Only the Vice President, Ikue, and Lead Prosecutor Momoko held themselves accountable for all information shared and discussed.

"We are continuing to urge No.2 to settle the copyright case out of court so the video evidence and anatinus resin samples from Baraen v. Founder Miyuki don't get stuck in the international tribunal's bureaucratic black hole. This means we must push the Founder Miyuki trial to April 25 so we have a verdict by May 12. It's a wee bit tight with the projected deposition hearing in June, but it's the best we can do now. Diplomat Tomas stalled as much as he could.

"On the other hand -" Ikue changed to a slide with mug shots of three men - one of whom was a blond-born immigrant from No.5. "- the police convinced three Wasps to testify against Founder Jou in Baraen v. O-Nihonkai, Hinata-gumi, et al.. We think Daiichi will be the key speaker since he used to work under Founder Jou in the municipal hospital before the Correctional Facility's expansion in 2017..."

The other three cases were presented with Ikue speaking clearly and slowly to downplay her working-class mannerisms and Kansai dialect she picked up from her father. Despite her impoverished upbringing and straight-B academic record, she thrived before boardrooms and in the courtroom. She earned a name for herself after completing her high school internship and helped her current boss navigate the monumental trial against No.6 for going against the Babylonian Accord. They still were atoning for sins of their fathers, but Ikue delivered impassioned but focused speeches that painted distinct images of what life was like for the people suffering under the old government and gave the media fantastic material for the headlines and editorials to sway enough opinions to give No.6 a fair chance to right past wrongs.

Had such a passionate personality lived under the old regime for more than two months, Ikue would have either been thrown down to the mountain of corpses or strapped to a table with her brain removed in the Correctional Facility.

In a calm haze, he did not think of that place as much as he used to. The mere mention of it no longer made his body turn cold or his head pulse from a splitting migraine. If he did, he would have been unable to work for the past seven months with constantly discussing its relevance in the government suits against the surviving founders of No.6. Dozens of experiments had occurred on that campus. A playground where the previous regime created and tested biological, chemical, technological, and military weapons. The more investigators, lawyers, and researchers uncovered, the more absurd and impossible the maths were to calculate how many years each culpable party would theoretically serve. It was a responsibility the Vice President wanted no part of.

 

_"Good morning, specimen. How are you feeling?"_

_"You knew that boy, didn't you, boss?"_

 

A small yet sharp throbbing in his head compelled him to slip an ibuprofen tablet from his emergency packet in his pocket. The pain disappeared in twenty minutes when everyone began to ask questions about the cases. None questioned the current plan, but Legal Assistant Chie expressed frustration in the lack of progress with the Global Census Bureau to identify the video of the child violent criminal being processed in the Founder Miyuki case. The Vice President popped a second ibuprofen as a preventative measure.

With only three minutes before their predetermined end time, Ikue turned her attention to her mentor. "Anything you would like to add, Vice President Shion?"

His lips arched slightly as he stood from his seat at the circular table. "Thank you for the thorough update, Ikue. I trust the judgment of you and our legal team to lead a swift and effective prosecution against Founders Miyuki and Jou for their crimes. What matters is that we recognize past atrocities, condemn them, and strive for a more fair and just society."

"Yes, sir!" the lawyers and Ikue responded in unison to varying degrees on the scale of seriousness and humor.

Shion stared somewhat dumbfounded. "At ease?"

Junior Defense Attorney Mikhail, a blue-eyed Japanese-Russian native born in the original Town of Roses, burst into laughter. "C'mon, guys. We're making the Vice President uncomfortable."

"You shouldn't be so casual around him, Mika," scoffed Member Hana.

Member Shujiao's intern lifted her head from her tablet for a second to mumble, "But we shouldn't act like we're in the military either."

"My god, y'all need a drink after work," Ikue said with a heavy sigh. She ignored the pointed glares from Members Shujiao and Hana. "Thank you for comin' today. This meeting's adjourned."

When the others took their time to mingle with the lawyers, Ikue and Shion slid out of the conference room. They worked at opposite ends of the Moondrop, and they rarely had time to speak to each other outside of Shion's mother's bimonthly dinners and their monthly walk through the orchid farms to the south.

"Thanks again for savin' my butt, boss," the woman repeated, voice light and energetic like a schoolgirl. "You caught a bunch of grammar and spellin' errors I'd normally miss. The last thing we need is the 'Kansai Bimbo' to sound like an inarticulate chimp in front of her superiors. I don't wanna get my bum thrown back to paper-filin' desk work."

"You're not going to get demoted over speech notes no one ever asks to look over. They're supposed to be prompts to elicit what you want to say."

Ikue gave a relenting shrug right before she whistled. "How's your vocabulary so good? Don't tell it's because -"

"It's because I read."

"- you read like a predictable, listless sod. Don't you have other hobbies?"

"I've become a regular guest on the world's biggest science education podcast," he said matter-of-factly as they reached the outermost hallway. Another meeting ended recently and they had to lower their voices to not impose on others' conversations.

Ikue may have rolled her eyes, but she listened to every single episode Shion appeared in. "Reading, ecology, dog-washing, podcasting, and babysitting your cousin. What're ya, a twenty-five-year-old man in his prime or a sixty-year-old retired grandma?"

"And this is coming from the twenty-two-year-old orchid girl who volunteers at the community gardens after drinking until five in the morning with Ken at nightclubs."

"Hey, unlike my university peers, I can make the best hangover preventatives and cures from the best organic ingredients."

He noticed Ikue's face glowing a shade of red that would make a nosier friend tease her about how exclusive her hangover treatments were. "That you bought from the store or begged from your neighbors?"

Ikue winced and burst into laughter as they entered the empty elevator. "Hit me where it hurts, don't ya, boss?"

"Unlike my high office peers, I've had a bit of practice with your brand of sarcasm before you worked here."

"More like my sarcasm cranked to eleven. Whoever that grandmaster or grandmistress of sass was, I'd love for you to pit me against them and see who comes out on top."

Ikue would lose. She wouldn't have qualified to compete, if there ever was a competition to hold.

 

_"Nezumi. I know you're here."_

_"Impressive. Your intuition has grown sharper."_

_"You're so agile..."_

_"I'm honored to be able to garner your praise, your Majesty."_

_"...and quick on your feet to slip out of a tight spot."_

_"Ha, you've even learned to be sarcastic! Keep growing up like this, and you may survive out here after all."_

 

His communication chip displayed the time: 16:36. He took out a small red pill from his emergency packet and swallowed it in a single swift motion.

"Headache?" Ikue asked, studying her mentor carefully.

"Not as often as they used to be, but yeah. It's been a long week, and I don't get out until 21:00."

Ikue groaned and slouched like a whiny child. "What crap are they draggin' you in now?"

"The Cultural Exchange Subcommittee wants to present dolls to the representatives of the International Federation for Children since their conference will be held around Hinamatsuri. Additionally, they have asked President Sosuke and I to deliver speeches for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as the presentation of the dolls."

"Bullshit!" The doors opened just as she blurted the curse, drawing the attention of the more sensitive employees on the fourth floor. She lowered her voice as she continued, "That's a waste of time for the most important figureheads and leaders of the city."

"It's supposed to be symbolic."

"It's called bendin' over backwards so your ass doesn't get probed. Just say no, boss." She looped her arm around his and pulled Shion into an empty storage room. Her eyes were proof wildfires could burn emerald. "You're involved in enough sideshow activities that it's all a second job that they're not payin' you for. Or just hire a personal assistant to help lift some of this shit off your shoulders. Don't let people walk over you, Shion."

He was so lucky to have an earnest, no-nonsense friend in this kind of stuffy work environment. Politics too often attracted manipulative attention-seekers and popular personalities at the expense of hard workers and principled individuals of integrity. Meeting Ikue was the best thing that could have happened to him during his eight-year career rebuilding No.6 from the ground up. He didn't need a thousand friendly faces when he had a dependable anchor like her.

His arm slipped out of her grasp, but he pulled her into a hug. She was a tall woman, her chin meeting Shion's nose without wearing heels, but her build was nothing but skin, bones, and a dusting of fat deposits typical for females. One day her metabolism would slow, an inevitability she cheerfully mocked herself over whenever she made room for the mouth-watering deserts at the bimonthly dinners.

"I'm sorry for making you worry, Ikue. I can handle this. In fact I stepped down from the event planning committee on Monday because I haven't been able to contribute anything of substance lately." When he let go, he gave her a small smile. "President Sosuke has informed Human Resources to investigate the complaints of increased pressure placed on several subcommittees and departments."

Ikue furrowed her brows. "Shion -"

"Everything will work out, Ikue. I'd like to talk more, but I have another meeting with Torei in five minutes." He showed her the time, and the woman blanched. "We'll discuss this next Saturday right before our walk, okay?"

Her guarded expression did not change, but she backed away enough to let Shion leave the storage room uninterrupted. "Just keep what I said in mind. And remember ya still owe me a beer, boss," Ikue quipped.

Shion laughed. "At the bar of your choice."

"Ain't how it works, you cheapskate!" she called over her shoulder as he blended into a group of people in the hallway. Her voice carried him through the evening, full of self-congratulatory meetings over resource conservation at best and turbulent theatrical debates over international corporate tax rates at worst.

There never was enough time in the world to give the attention and care friends need or ask for. Worse, there was less time for a friend to call out the other on a lie, let alone remember it for the next encounter to follow up on the oddity. Ikue lacked either the memory or focus to hold him accountable for every instance over seven years.

Shion used to hate lying about his health as he walked through a light fog every day, but he carried a flashlight to illuminate the obstacles everyone faced on a daily basis. Sometimes he felt cold in a temperate room or could not keep his brain and facial muscles in synch when he wanted to smile, but he was otherwise normal. Every morning he woke up, stared at his reflection in the mirror, and liked what he saw. He was a normal, hardworking young man with an exceptional resume and four decades of further greatness ahead of him. He lived in his own apartment, regularly visited his mother, and donated a large portion of his paycheck he didn't need to charity.

Everything with Shion was fine.

* * *

Snow projected a hologram of Ken demanding Sion and Ranko to return to the bakery immediately. They locked the door to the burrow and didn't look back, but Ranko prayed to any deity out there that she would return with her father and Shion. She knew it in her bones that this was the best example of home. One day she will hear new stories of this strange, wonderful place that belonged to her father.

Three dogs guarded them once they reached the outskirts of the West Block. Sion used the best shortcuts to get them back as quickly as possible with the fewest number of people to see or stop them. Neither knew why they had to go back, but these two children did not rebel against their parents over pressing matters like this.

They suspected it had something to do with Shion. Something happened to him yesterday, and something new happened today.

Ken updated them about three blocks away from the bakery. Her father was at the airport, but the next flight to No.3 wasn't in another two hours. They bought tickets for Ranko and Karan to board the same plane, and they quickly pulled the children into a rideshare vehicle bound for the airport without giving Sion or Ranko a chance to say hello. The situation came to light in numerous out-of-context chunks of calls Ken made to Rikiga, criticizing him for "letting bad info slide", "putting everyone through hell", and "dragging everyone out of the city for sport".

As Sion tried to get some answers from his mother and a muted, pale, but alert Karan, Ranko didn't care where on Earth she was. All she wanted was her father to be happy. He sang songs, cited plays and poems, told stories, made jokes, and gave the best hugs when he's happy. But around her, he's only happy for a day. Ranko wanted him to always be happy, and nothing could give him the push to move in that right direction but Shion.

Nothing appeared wrong with the airport until they entered and heard shouting and discord from the No.3 terminal. Between security grappling a man off an officer he kept at knife-point and customers calling the police to sedate what they didn't know was the "white demon", Ranko heard her father scream the same sentence over and over again like madness had taken him away from her faster than child services.

"Shion's alive."

Why wouldn't he be, she wondered. Her father didn't create him one day from the figments of his imagination to entertain himself and the world around him. Why would he when Shion brought him as much pain as happiness? Why would he leave everything behind to return to the city that killed his family, that gave him no food or shelter or love, that he left behind to be a mouse free from the blood-soaked talons of a bird? But then, why did everyone but Karan and Ken - diffusing the situation and all but begging for her father to not be arrested - challenge him? Why did they look at him with scorn and hatred and disgust over him declaring the truth to the universe?

Ranko didn't know when the scene ended. She didn't realize Sion and her siblings enveloped her in a blanket of warmth until the hundreds of questions ceased. The echo of her father's outburst burned her, and she couldn't will herself to move. She cried for her papa, but her mouth couldn't move and she had no voice. He'd never hear her anyway. She wasn't who he needed or wanted. She wasn't Shion. He wasn't her father. He didn't love her. He wouldn't drop everything for her -

"SHE'S YOUR DAUGHTER, NEZUMI!!"

The world stopped for Karan's voice to assault every pair of human eardrums on Earth. Her small frame, her gentle smile, and endless compassion hid a thunderous energy with the precision of an acupuncture needle that made a burly security officer and even Ken - loud and harsh with language themself - quivered before her. Even with little color and blood in her skin, her back stood tall and firm as she stared up at the man on the receiving end.

"You may love my son with every fiber of your being, but he is not the only person who exists in this world. He's not the only one you have. You were never an 'impotent child incapable of caring for another person'. The former government would have killed Shion if you didn't save him. He would have died in the streets from starvation or worse if you hadn't stayed by his side. You had proved yourself more than capable at sixteen than most parents in their fifties!

"And now here you are-" Karan's voice softened considerably as she held his face like he was her own blood. "-nine years later with a baby girl you saved without asking for pity or payment. Without complaint, you give her everything she needs to live and smile as any child should. You are the world to her, Nezumi. She knows nothing of family or home but through you. Ken, Rikiga, and I will provide the help you need, but we aren't her parents. Only one person in the world is her papa."

She then leaned in and said something that made the man jolt and search around him until his gaze met Ranko's. That same something set off a fire in Ranko's chest. It spread to her legs, forcing her from her knees to her feet, and she broke into a run. Everything else was a blur but the man who was not but was her father. He knelt down, closed the seemingly infinite distance with his arms and squeezed her tiny body to nearly bursting. She hugged him as tightly, begging him to promise he would still be her father when it would no longer just be the two of them. At the time she didn't know if he knew that was what she wanted. She felt his breath hitch as he clung to the little storm that led and put him back on the path home.

When the airport incident diffused at last, Ken allowed Sion to join Karan, Ranko, and her father to No.3 for a few days until everything settles down. Little to no conversation took place as they waited anxiously for either and update from Rikiga or the lights of the city-state from above.

"It's Shion," her father told her after Karan, Sion, and all of Ranko's siblings but Seldon had fallen asleep from their dinner. "He's in the hospital."

She only knew the word from stories other children said about their families or from her father wanting to treat his own injuries instead of going elsewhere. Hospitals seemed dark, places of torment, sickness, and suffering. If Shion was in one... "Why?! Why, papa?!"

Her father clutched her hand and did not look away from the panic he shared with her. His voice a fragmented whisper, he confessed, "I don't know, Ran... I don't know..."

* * *

The sun rose nearly two hours later than Shion was accustomed to, and he would not stay in the city long enough to make the necessary adjustments to his sleeping pattern. Legs dangling over the edge of his bed and collar of his t-shirt askew on one shoulder, he watched the sky slowly lighten and change colors from the edge of the double bed next to the sliding door and balcony. The room reminded him of one of the apartments he visited in a revitalized neighborhood in the northwestern suburbs of No.6, but it lacked the view of thick morning mists blanketing the forest and mountains.

New notifications appeared on his ID pad. He tore his eyes from a streak of dark grey on the horizon and read through emails, news, and updates from his colleagues and connections across the world. The six city states approved the applications for the cluster of self-sustaining villages of 10,000 people in central India to begin construction and negotiations to create No.7. Natives of the Mambilla Plateau have received reparations from the government of No.1 for the destruction of the nearby villages that once surrounded the city-state. The global population finally reached 400 million on March 6 at 04:52 in No.5's timezone, and 12% of Earth was now habitable for long-term human settlement.

He liked waking up to good news, for they would set him off on the right foot for the entire day. It didn't change the fact he needed to take his medications to maintain that good mood, but anything helped.

After replying to his colleagues' updates regarding the trials, he entered the bathroom and readied himself for a quieter day than yesterday. He just had enough concealer for his face and neck, and his roots did not require additional dye. He saved his contacts for after donning a clean shirt, solid navy clip-on tie, and black slacks. Upon looking closely in the mirror, he saw who he could have been if his life played out differently. Balls of cotton muffled the screams, the sonic blasts, the blaring alarms, and the guns echoing in the small cavern of his mind. The trials reawakened those memories, but they were easy to overcome and rationalize. Sometimes they slipped through the chemical barrier of mist and bled into his dreams, but he knew he could work through them. They won't follow him forever because they were one time, acute moments that caused pain all at once.

 

_"One bullet per person. Any last words?"_

 

A knock on his door kept him from drifting into that territory, a relief he needed on a day when he had plenty of time to kill. He didn't bring his pills to dispell the vivid migrane-inducing thoughts anyway.

"Mornin', Shion," greeted the green-eyed woman three years his junior with her hands firmly behind her back.

He felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he let her inside. "Good morning, Ikue."

Setting herself on his queen-sized bed, Ikue placed one bag on the bed and the other on her lap. "Hope you're not in a rush to ditch the conference. They only had two croissants left - one plain, one raisin. Thank me later."

Shion joined her and opened his bag. A bottle of unsweetened tea, a red apple, and yogurt accompanied the baked treat. "You didn't have to get me breakfast. I was on my way down anyway."

"Not with that rush job, boss." Her finger dabbed at a clump of concealer he missed and spread it on a blind spot behind his ear. "Since you had your talk and caught Betty's presentation yesterday, what're you up to before your flight?"

"I'm not sure yet, but it'd be good to get out of the city for a while. Anthropologists and historians have been restoring Russian and Kazakhstani architecture in the ghost villages in the southern scrublands to help No.3 develop its rural revitalization efforts. I've also heard the peatlands in this region have some fascinating microscopic lifeforms that don't resemble anything in any of the textbooks I've read in university. They may have mutated and adapted to the changes in the environment, but more research needs to be conducted."

"That so?" She nodded solemnly and sipped her bottled apple juice. "If I didn't know better, that sounds like more work."

"Ecology is my hobby, not work. Even if it wasn't I can't help it if my brand of fun is different from yours."

"True that. But you're gettin' your hands dirty in the earth, which isn't something most people would do nowadays."

"Says the farmer's daughter who won't get within ten feet of Ken or Sion without a hazmat suit," observed Shion.

"Hey! They're fine folks, even with them swimmin' in dog dander. And I can't help I'm allergic to pets. And pops ran his orchids right 'til the old government surveillance system ended and needed a watchdog once I was off to school."

Half expecting Hakugin or Ko to jump on Ikue's lap and cause her to squeal with delight until she sneezed her brains out, Shion smirked.

"Your little ones are special cases," she added, knowing what her mentor was thinking. "Kinda wish you brought them. They'd turn this political circle-jerk into a real party."

Shion would not describe the conference as such, even in a private setting, but he did miss his mice dearly. "Mom and Sion have plenty of experience looking after them, and they have the forest if they want an adventure."

"Yeah, but... the extra company would be nice, don't you think?"

"Of course, but I've only been away for two days. Virga, Oscar, Hakugin, and Ko aren't so spoiled enough that they'll die without me."

Ikue pouted and stuffed more croissant than her mouth could handle. The People's Committee learned rather early that having down-to-earth and no-nonsense members helped the ship to stay on course, even if polite company locally and internationally had a 50-50 chance of ending with someone's face punched. 

"Fair enough." Ikue finished chewing and swallowing once she spoke again. "They'd never eat the food here, anyway. Karan has a monopoly on their stomaches."

"Very true."

They chatted until the sky turned clear blue, and Ikue gathered their trash and readied herself for a meeting with No.2's lawyers. Shion skimmed the story about the lawsuit between them and No.6 possibly being settled out of court, but as Ikue said nothing of the matter, he trusted her word over anyone else's.

"Don't work too too hard, Ikue," Shion reminded the woman as she picked a dust bunny off his tie.

Her lips flattened into a thin line, removing some of her pink lip gloss. "As promised, I'll take that vacation after Yozo and I meet Director Feng at the Global Census Bureau. The Miyuki case can't get off on our best foot forward without this breakthrough."

Shion could only nod. The woman wanted the copyright case with No.2 to be settled as quickly and smoothly as possible so she could focus entirely on the case she had built for the past three years. For someone who knew nothing of the people involved, Shion admired how many sleepless nights and long work hours she endured to obtain enough evidence to put one of the original founders of No.6 on trial. He would save his praises for after she wins the case and not before. 

 

_"Be at ease, specimen; this is only a precaution. We don't want you to sever your tongue."_

_"You knew him, didn't you, boss?"_

 

He ignored the small voice of the concerned mentee he had shared meals with from what felt like a hazy dream. Time made less sense when his medications kicked in all at once.

"Have fun today, you hear?" Ikue called out from near the elevator in the hall. "Treat yourself right, boss!"  

Shion smiled and waived until the woman boarded the elevator. With one last glance in the mirror to ensure the mask covered everything, he left his hotel room with his bag in hand and with the balcony window open to the great plain in which No.3 resided. The wind blew eastward, guiding Shion to the first activity of the day.

* * *

_Shion._

Upon stepping foot into the hospital, a force stronger than the wind pulled him past Rikiga, the staff, and patients. Tablets fell to the floor and beds spun in the opposite direction of where they needed to go. Heavy breathes and soles of boots resounded and echoed through the designated quiet wings. White walls that would bring back the nightmares of the Correctional Facility were outnumbered by memories of a boy.

Even with a little girl on his back, arms tightly bound around his neck, he cursed his legs for being shackled and not carrying him fast enough.

_Shion._

The memories that haunted him at night in his sleep, that dragged him into black tar, that made him want to severe parts of his body to escape the longing and pain filled him with a purpose and drive he had never let himself feel before. He missed that boy: his smile, his soft hair - white and brown, his earnest eyes, his alluring scar, his chapped lips, his gentle kisses, his inability to dance, his linguistic deficiencies, his names, his endless questions, his overly salty soups, his unapologetic tears, his open confessions, his intelligence, his strength, his bravery, his compassion, his protectiveness, his warmth. He missed him in candlelight, in darkness, in sunlight, in moonlight, in rain, in snow, in storms, in winds, in dirt, in water, in quiet, in chaos. He missed him reading books, washing dogs, petting mice, reciting facts, studying instructions, memorizing details, describing his life, watching him, praising him, scolding him, kissing him, defending him, loving him.

No matter how he felt about him now, no matter how much he changed since that spring morning nine years ago, Nezumi needed Shion. He needed him to overwhelm his five senses to feel right again. He needed to be recalibrated to finally be free to be who he should be for himself and for Ranko.

_Shion._

He didn't want to be alone anymore. He wanted someone to rely on and help him when life feels too unbearable. He wanted to show how much he's changed because of him. He had to keep the promises he made to two brown-eyed angels that gave him more years to live. He wanted them to meet, to share what about him drives them insane, and to make him embarrassed because of how much happier he makes them. He didn't want to go back on stage without someone watching and supporting him before, during, and after every show. He needed Shion to believe in him almost as much as he believed in Shion.

Maybe attachments were never meant to be shackles. He would have never known unless he stopped running and learned to make sense of something hardwired into human behavior. No words described what he had with Shion, but he had a name for what stopped him from tossing Ranko aside whenever an opportunity arose.

Stories glorified concepts such as "true" or "unconditional" love between people who are not related by blood. It appeared in many shapes and many forms between any two conscious people capable of love. He had mocked the prince and the swallow and didn't understand why characters would die for something that cannot be measured. He denied it at every opportunity, but he felt that love twice, saving him from and putting him in the grasp of death on multiple occasions. Life meant nothing without them - Shion and Ranko - and he couldn't keep pushing them away while they still haven't left him.

Still, he knew he was crazy, storming up flights of stairs and pushing past staff and security with Ranko on his back to reach room 438 in the intensive care unit. To Shion.

"Papa! Papa! It's him!"

Ranko's cry halted him in his tracks. She pointed at a window he almost missed in his unbridled hurry. He stepped back in anticipation for the one he always let slip between his fingers for thirteen years.

 

_"Nezumi, I'm glad I met you."_

 

The thick window separated him from a young man hooked to IVs dripping fluids and monitors tracking his brainwaves and heart rate. White as the walls and sheets and bed, the soft bruises and light cuts from injuries sustained to his face, neck, and arms glowed purple and red. On his left cheek, beneath fluffy brown hair with patches of white strands, was the pink snake wrapped around his entire body.

_Shion!_

They entered a decontamination chamber between the room from the hallway, and he waited on pins and needles until the door unlocked. Ranko slid off his back and bolted forward the moment the door to the room in the ICU opened for them. No physical barrier stood between Nezumi and Shion anymore. The mice and rats poured out of his knapsack and pockets, climbed on top of the young man, and wept for joy. Nezumi's anticipation peaked when he returned to Shion's side and reached for him.

When the pads of his fingers caressed his cheek, a tsunami of safety and warmth crashed over him, forcing his knees to buckle. An inelegant moment of clumsiness he'd laugh at later, now ignored for the simple reality before him. He pressed his forehead to Shion's and was further disarmed by scents that unearthed more memories he had ignored and forgotten.

_Warm. You're still so alive and warm, Shion._

Slight movement across from him signaled Ranko had climbed onto the bed and nestled herself between Shion's arm and side with the mice and rats. Nezumi's heart ached at how his daughter expressed some kind of familiarity for a man she had never met. Children trusted too easily, or Ranko believed in Nezumi so much that she would accept a stranger into her life for her father's sake. Whatever the reason, he carefully lay beside Shion without having the needles removed while in his current state.

Nine years of wandering - lost, confused, sick, miserable, exhausted, and in pain - had finally ended. The youngest mice chirped excitedly at the journey's end, and Seldon and Ink made themselves home in Shion's hair. Nezumi rested his head on Shion's chest, feeling and hearing the beating of a heart that had stopped once before.

Sometime in the midst of the beeps of Shion's measured vitals and all-encompassing warmth from the blinding, cold white light of the hospital, Ranko asked her father sleepily, "Is this home, papa?"

Home. Nezumi had never understood the word, never used it. Now, it didn't feel so alien, so bizarre and unbecoming of who he is now with a familiy of mice, rats, a red-headed girl, and the boy who made this moment possible. He nodded, smiling as his eyelids grew heavy from two days of emotional distress he never wants to endure again.

_I'm home, Shion. It's not just me anymore, but for as long as you'll have me, I'm not leaving you again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I got to squeeze in another chapter! And it's longer than usual! And reunion at last?!?!
> 
> *weeps for joy*
> 
> I admit I got an extra kick of inspiration from watching the recent animated adaptation of 'The Little Prince' on Netflix yesterday. Non-Japanese animation has done little for me in recent years, but I was very pleased and related so much to the girl in the movie. And I loved the ending because of what it implied.
> 
> Like 'No.6', 'The Little Prince' reduces me to a blubbering mess at numerous points, especially the ending. In fact if not for a few No.6 fics referencing the book, I would have never read it. Unoriginal, perhaps, for me to reference the book in my No.6 fic too, but both stories stirred me so much emotionally and creatively that I can't separate them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "His mind's asleep, but not his body, papa. Shion knows we're here."

"Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today - all without seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome. I had to have company - I was made for it, I think - so I made friends with the animals."

\- Mark Twain,  _The Diaries of Adam and Eve_

* * *

When two days passed with Shion's eyes still closed, Karan and her father told Ranko and Sion that he was in a "coma". A strange condition of being alive and dead at once, where the body and brain changed, but the spirit of the person is frozen and unreachable. No one knew when he'd wake up, so they had to wait.

Ranko didn't want to wait anymore. It became one of her least favorite words, second only to "dead". Her father waited long enough to go back to Shion, and now, with him spending his evenings by the man's side, he couldn't say or do anything he wanted to say and do for years. And Ranko just wanted to see what made the man her father loved more than anything in the world. Maybe more than her.

"Relationships aren't contests," her father had said after calming her down from her tantrum in front of Karan and Sion. "You can't feel the same for two people, but that's not a bad thing. It's more complicated than that."

She blew a raspberry. Her father never hid how much he hated her act of rebellion, but Ranko sometimes had no way to express how much she didn't want to put up with her father being unreasonable.

His porcelain skin morphed into a wrinkly white grape. He inhaled deeply and said, "Ranko. You love your papa, don't you?"

Ranko stiffened. She had come down enough from her earlier hysteria to not impulsively shout "NO!" At the question, but she wasn't happy enough to say "Yes" right away. Normally, she would say "yes". Between the two of them, only she said that small, magical sentence that many people speak as often as their names. She learned it from daycare teachers, other kids, books, movies, and families she and her father passed by in the streets. While not learned from her father, he did nothing to discourage it. He would comb her hair with his fingers or give her a piggyback ride around their apartment to avoid the laughing mice biting at his heels. Sometimes he'd let her sleep beside him, especially in winter when her radiator of a father wrapped her completely in a warm, impregnable cocoon. For someone who never said "I love you" he always showed it in the moments that those who said those words every day would often fail.

Unable to articulate any of those thoughts yet, she nodded.

He continued, not knowing how bright his smile really was. "Do you love our mice?"

She nodded again.

"Do you love them like you love me?"

Ranko tilted her head to the side. A stray lock of hair fell into her face, which her father tucked behind her ear.

Her father inhaled. "When I play with your hair, does it feel the same when Seldon plays with your hair?"

"No. Seldon is warm and scratchy. You're big and soft."

He grinned like he found what he was looking for. "It's the same with how we feel about people. You like when Seldon's in your hair and when I play with it, but we don't touch your hair the same way. A mouse uses it's whole body to play with your hair. I only use one hand, and my hand doesn't look or feel the same as Seldon's body. My hugs are big with my arms wrapped around your body. Seldon's small, so he can only cuddle against a fraction of your body.

"You love me because I'm your papa. You love our mice, Sunny, and Nelo because they're your brothers and sisters. They are your playmates, and I'm your guardian. It's all love, but it doesn't look or feel the same."

Understanding enough to nod, a thought then occurred to her. "Mice don't have arms, papa."

Her father blinked once, twice, then laughed and pulled her into a hug. Ranko, arms uneasy and jellylike in this confusion, spotted Karan smiling and Sion gaping. She had forgotten they were there, and she suspected her father did too.

Ranko had butterflies in her stomach over how much affection her father gave in the past few days. It felt like forever since he was last much harder to reach, when he kept everything in abandoned knapsacks, dusty books, and tearful nightmares. It felt like forever, but she didn't change. Nothing but a flower petal powerless to the wind.

"Are my hugs too small, papa?" she mumbled into his shoulder. 

With his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, "Never, Ran. No one hugs me like you do. Not even Shion."

A lump got stuck in Ranko's throat as she wrapped her stubby arms around the tall, moody adult. The last ten minutes had felt like an entire day.

"Things will change with our family when Shion wakes up," he said when he pulled back, leaving one hand on Ranko's shoulder and the other at the base of her neck. "I don't know what he'll think of you, but you and I are a package deal. If I can't have you both, you come first."

_What are you saying, papa?_ Why did he think it was possible for Shion to want to be with her father without Ranko anywhere in the picture?

She couldn't read Karan's expression, and Sion returned his attention to his book on the two remaining protected reefs of the southern Pacific.

"We can't always get what we want, princess, but we can hope for the best while preparing for the worst." His pointer finger stroked the tender spot where her earlobe connects to her head. Ranko giggled at the sensitivity. "Shion has always loved kids. I'm sure he'll like you, Ran. Look how much he's spoiled Sion. It's hard to tell his mama was a dogkeeper."

"Hey!" the boy cried, eyes torn from his thick book on his lap. "Don't make fun of my mom!"

Karan shook her head in the kind of familiar exasperation that lost all of its heat from years of beign exposed to such behavior. She waited until her father returned to his seat by Shion's left for her to invite Ranko to sit on her lap. When she accepted it, Ranko noticed a profound difference between the gentleness of an older, experienced mother and that of her father, struggling to play the role of two parents without any help.

Seldon and Mocha popped out of Ranko's hair and climbed onto Karan's shoulder to mark her as one of the family. "Shion will adore you, Ranko. I think he'll be surprised in a good way."

Slipping his book in his bag, Sion said suddenly, "Hey, Ran! Why don't you talk to Uncle Shion while he's asleep? He might hear you and feel like he knows you when he wakes up!"

Even at the time, no one understood what happened to people in comas. Some believed they could still hear and feel what happened around them. Some believed they were just in a deep sleep, oblivious to everything outside of them. Whatever truly happened to Shion, they would be around him frequently without being able to talk to him. One cannot help but start a conversation with someone in a coma, as it's not different from those who speak to a sleeping person or the dead at their tombstone or the place their spirit lingers in this world.

Ranko's mind could not understand what a coma was, but she remembered when her father was asleep for a few days. No one told her to not talk or read to him. Doing the same to Shion was different - they had never met before - but this could be a way to get him to know her. Her father loved Shion, Ranko loved her father, and her father loved her. If it were possible for Shion to love Ranko and for her to love him, she wanted to try.

Karan carried her to the bed, and Ranko lay in the same spot as before. Sunny, Murasaki, and Haku moved to Shion's chest to make room for their sister. She felt his pulse in synch with the cold beeps of life registering on the monitor. The man looked pale and frail in this lighting, and his dark brown hair lost its color with every bath the nurses gave him. His contacts had been removed, leaving Ranko to imagine what red-purple hue his irises were. She imagined either one of the streaks in the glass supernova from Carnival or the mouse and flower necklace or the studded earrings her father wore. The girl gripped the pendant around her neck as she wondered what to say first.

Thankfully, Sion helped her. "Hi, uncle." His chipper voice above her rained some ease onto her. "It's been three days, but we're still here. Aunty made lemon poppyseed muffins this morning. Everyone loved them, even your doctor. Niki's a nice lady. She lets us visit you whenever we want.

"If you didn't hear him, it's not a dream, uncle. Nezumi's back! Everyone knows you really missed him. And he's not alone. He's a papa now!"

"Yes, believe it or not, Nezumi has a little girl," said Karan, weaving her son's locks between her fingers. "Her name is Ranko. He adopted her as a baby while living in No.1. You should see how well he's raised her on his own. Nezumi might tell you the story if he weren't so shy about it. It seems my cherry cake deserves more credit than I thought." The woman smiled without apology when her father sent her what looked like a hybrid of an offended glare and uneasy panic. "Nezumi told her about you, Shion, and Ranko wants to meet you so much. She visits every day with all the mice she and Nezumi keep. She's a little shy like her papa, but she once she starts talking, she'll say everything on her mind."

With light nudging from her siblings, Karan, and Sion, Ranko looked to her father. He donned an unreadable mask, but he seemed expactant. Even when she didn't know exactly what he was feeling, sometimes she could still intuit a curiosity he'd often failed to suppress when hiding emotion or intent. How did anyone not see something so obvious?

Ranko pressed her temple to Shion's shoulder, thin like her father's but less muscular, and mumbled her hello. It wasn't the best first introduction, but now they have formally met.

* * *

He stood in the six-magnitude field of his childhood. It expanded beyond what the eye could see, even though the real field was a mere acre. Every flower one could imagine existing occupied the field, crafting a concoction of wistful scents and dreamy colors no manufacturer or botanists could ever replicate. Pollen and petals drifted lazily in the wind, ushering him to his knees to thread the flowers between his fingers.

His pinkie passed by his namesake. Tatarinow's aster. His hand drifted back to the flower and picked it, root and all. A little plant of folk remedies and research in antibacterial and antiseptic medicine. A delicate plant of remembrance and eternal memory. A plant only the few of a niche circle of the knowledgeable would recognize. What a sad fate for a small, unremarkable flower to be passed over for roses and lilies or sunflowers and lilacs while it will never forget the person who found it twice by some divine or mathematical miracle!

It never did any good to brood over things that can never be changed. To ponder on the past too much blinds one from looking forward.

He replanted the aster in the field and gave it a kindness it otherwise would never receive from anyone else who passed by. It was the least he could do after having a stranger give him some company and made him feel loved. Even if it was only a fleeting moment. Even if it was a lie. The stranger taught him how to survive this large infinite world, only to neglect to mention it only became an infinite world worth being apart of with at least one other person: family, a friend, a rival, an enemy, a lover. Memories of those moments should have been enough, but the human heart was anything but rational and predictable.

He decided to lay by the flower until someone more worthy of it would give it the company it needed to survive this six-magnitude field through sun, rain, winds, and storms. The image of the flower burned into his vision, he closed his eyes and drifted into the stardust, far from any voice that would call his name if someone missed him.

_Roads go ever ever on_  
_Under cloud and under star,_  
_Yet feet that wandering have gone_  
_Turn at last to home afar._  
_Eyes that fire and sword have seen_  
_And horror in the halls of stone_  
_Look at last on meadows green_  
_And trees and hills they long have known._

He thought he felt a little wisp illuminate compassion beside him, only for it to fade back into stillness when he lifted his weary head and turned to look.

* * *

"If you ask me, I suspect this was an opportunistic prank."

His pork and mushroom pirozhki halfway between the plate and his mouth, Nezumi furrowed his brows at the face of a crazy reporter with his nose hot on a scent that had consumed his thoughts for over a week. Not that Nezumi was any different.

Shion's doctor had explained every detail about the man's condition, better and worse than what Nezumi wanted to hear. Additional tests needed to be performed to monitor Shion's brain, not oxygen-deprived but healing from a concussion of unknown cause. His body did not suffer any injuries that could not be healed completely despite being in a coma. As relieved as everyone was, waiting for Shion to wake up and explain how he ended up in this state kept his loved ones on pins and needles. Ranko and Sion did not sit in any of the discussions, but they felt the worry from the adults and knew Shion still had a fight to pull through. Unable to comprehend much of what was happening, Ranko only calmed down when she and their companions lay by Shion's side as Nezumi sang.

 

_"His mind's asleep, but not his body, papa. Shion knows we're here."_

 

As absurd it sounded, he didn't have the heart to correct her silly claim. So he sang, even when he didn't want to. After the first week of waiting passed, singing became second nature, and any anxiety or feelings that held him back before had been laid to rest by the desire to see Shion open his eyes and them, brown or purple, to meet his once more. He poured so much of himself in that room that he gave no second to speculating what happened to Shion until he walked out. Not one for superstition, he still felt risky and unlucky to speak of what bad things happened to the patient in front of him. Even worse was to jump to conclusions before the logic, like starting off the journey by bringing out the carriage before the horses.

"I can't narrow it down to who yet," Rikiga continued, folding his arms and reclining his seat back enough to not fall back into the corner wall of the hospital cafeteria. "Either this place needs to update their piece of shit Russian-to-Japanese translator, someone here gave a false report to the Global Census Bureau, or someone in the GCB intentionally released a false notification. My contacts here are still fishing out the first two options, and I've asked Ikue to check my feelers in the bureau."

Ikue. He had heard the name a few times. A woman who worked with Shion in the government. While she had been informed of Shion being alive before the story leaked to the media, she had yet to visit, stating important matters regarding the lawsuit with No.2 that would be resolved by the end of the week. Either a workaholic or a self-centered leech would not drop everything to see their mistakenly-declared-dead-but-actually-comatose friend.

Nezumi placed the rest of his pirozhki on the napkin on his lap for Haku, Panpan, and Murasaki to eat to their hearts' content. "If it's a computer error, Ink will be faster." The mouse made a small agreeable chirp between the superfibre cloth and his neck. "Depending on how long it takes for it to navigate the network and platforms, we'll know if it's incompetence or traffickers."

Eyes swollen to the size of lemons, Rikiga dropped his fork and shushed his lunch buddy. "Don't be so casual about it, Eve! It's bad enough you and Ranko made a scene the second you arrived in this city!"

"They've known about us for years, Rikiga. Hiding will make them even more curious and desperate to get their hands on us."

"And not once did you try -"

"They want to extract her DNA, not her actual hair. Dying and cutting it doesn't erase or suppress the genes that made it red and curly."

Two men and an eight-year-old child passed by their table. Nezumi's eyes caught the men wearing one half of a set of small studded rook piercings, shorthand for an arrangement not legally recognized in No.1 and No.3. No.4 and No.6 never cared about the topic either way. No.2 cared far too much for religious reasons. No.5 celebrated their legality of same-sex relations to the point of parody. Much like the oldest profession, so long as reasonable people communicated and respected boundaries, Nezumi found no reason for outside forces to barge into someone's private life and police something done safely, sanely, and consensually. He called it common sense.

When the discrete family were out of earshot, Rikiga leaned in and hissed, "If they just wanted DNA, they'd snatch a sample of blood, spit, dead skin, or hair. No, they take the entire person. They want more than their genes for whatever demented reason, and Ranko's a lighthouse beacon that won't turn off."

Nezumi shot a glare that stopped Rikiga from continuing his train of thought. The journalist quivered at eight eyes boring into his insinuations. "My eyes have never left her and they never will leave her. But we're not here to talk about my parenting methods." The guise lifted when a stranger gave Nezumi a cup of coffee, which he accepted with a smile and gratitude in Russian. When the stranger passed, he ignored the writing on the napkin that accompanied the cup. "If you think any of them are after Shion, then it's a political move, which doesn't fit the modus operandi of either group."

"Normally, yes. But No.1 and No.3 are known for top officials as undercover bribers that funnel resources into the local and global markets. No one doubts every city-state has men and women with dirty hands. These groups have enough money to tempt anyone with power to keep them an open secret. Think the yakuza, only they don't live by an honor code that keeps them in a grey area of necessary evil when the government can't solve problems fast enough."

"Then enlighten me, old man. What about Shion would make him a target?"

Rikiga laughed at what he perceived to be a blatant admission of ignorance. The former fanboy of the theatrical crossdressing performer wasted no time in schooling his young rival in the information business. "I'm shocked you haven't been following every detail of Shion's political life, but if you're so ignorant -"

"Raising a princess in a fortified moving castle with vigilant knights at her beck and call requires such a devotion to time and resources that stalking a universally beloved politician becomes a fleeting afterthought."

"No need to be so defensive, Eve. I was only joking." He continued, ignoring the second round of cold glares that had not lost their bites in nine years if the lack of eye contact was an indicator. "There're two factors to consider: his perceived appearance and his policies.

"We and most of his peers are aware Shion doesn't fit the profile for being trafficked. The Wasps rely more on extortion when they seek their targets; anyone else is just a quick way to tell the Suns to shut up and back off. While we can't account for all traits that geneticists or biologists could recognize on sight, we do know that at least 83% of trafficked individuals have at least one of the following traits: light-born hair or eyes, curly hair, freckles, one dimple, and left-handedness. Anyone who doesn't fit the 'average' mold of dark and straight-haired, brown-eyed, and right-handed. If he leaves everything alone, Shion looks like he completely stands out despite fitting the 'average' profile genetically."

"If that's true, where do the Wasps not operate the same way as the Suns?"

Rikiga scoffed and took a bite out of his long-cold kuurdak. He barely touched it despite expressing how much it reminded him of Karan's hot pot for her New Year's feast. "They're competitors with different specialties and attack patterns, but they seek the same kinds of individuals with uncommon recessive phenotypes. Wasps extort families of targets to bleed them dry, then mail the mutilated corpse back home when they got the money and DNA they need. It's more personal and they are sitting on wealth the founders of No.6 amassed over twenty years, so they don't need a huge market to fund their operations. If they just snatch someone never to have them return dead - which happens sometimes - it's to give the Suns 'the goods' while they shut up and not have to pay the hefty fine for overstepping the market boundaries."

With his confident delivery and plain language, Rikiga did not need to tell Nezumi every little detail and story to prove his expertise on this topic. Years of investigations, roadblocks, successes, and losses underlined each word. He still had that keen sense of smell that knew the key players of a game and their movements to provide a strategist ample material to devise a plan to disrupt the status quo. They didn't always get along, but Nezumi felt more grateful that Rikiga put up with his manipulations when they brought down No.6.

_I wonder if he and Kuru have been exchanging notes..._ He had tried to keep her from sticking her nose in the honeypot, but he had bet she'd do it anyway to learn how the "white demon" seemed "interestingly close" to a world leader without ever telling her. "Fair enough. Continue."

His business acquaintance raised an eyebrow. "No smartass retort from the peanut gallery?"

"Me? In the audience? I'm the leading man too busy grooming my feathers for a display to remember on stage."

Rikiga hung his head and grumbled. "Goddamned self-obsessed peacock."

"Your praises are my glory, my lord." Nezumi batted his eyes to sweeten the guise.

Face turning a destructively vivid shade of violet, the old man cleared his throat until the vain Shakespearian actor stopped marveling his reflection in the unused spoon. Not all of his skills had rusted and crumbled apart in the past few years of numbness, but Rikiga had built a slightly stronger resistance to Nezumi's charms.

"ANYWAY if that doesn't convince you, then the political reason might. Ever since my publishing house released the police investigation on the Wasps, Shion has openly withdrew support from anyone with ties to them and campaigned to have all of the poor idiots expelled from office. He became the underground's public enemy number one overnight. It got especially ugly when he threw the Environmental Protection Subcommittee's chairman under the bus once a raid exposed his home as a midway for the Wasp's sex trafficking network. One of my former magazine girls who became an elementary school history teacher was saved from that bastard's cellar. I ain't sorry he's a casualty.

"Wasps tend to target individuals somewhat randomly, but for the past few years they have gone after some who are close to us. Risa, another of my old girls who's is an editor for my newspaper, nearly got abducted after she wrote a column on the Wasp who targeted Sion and offed himself in custody. Ken's dogs have attacked a lot of shady characters that wandered too close to Karan's cafe, one of whom is going to testify in court against the group. Ikue assaulted a diplomat involved in the Pacific Human Channel at the 2025 Global Unity Summit for spiking Shion's drink with quaaludes. And that's not counting the death threats and detailed abduction plans that slip past the filters and into Shion's inbox."

Clicking his tongue, Nezumi replied, "That's the best you've got?"

"Of course the haughty, entitled drama queen thinks _I'm_ insane."

Rikiga did not know how lucky he was that Nezumi chose to ignore that comment. "All you just described are little more than circumstantial evidence that any crazy asshole with an agenda can come up with." Besides spiking his drink with a powerful incapacitating drug that made a seasoned doctor like Kuru sweat, but he kept that point to himself.

Rikiga's glare did not impress Nezumi as much as his even tone of voice slipping between clenched teeth. "Yes, I don't have any hard proof, but it's a hunch I'd bet my life on. I can't speak for him, but one of the benefits of Shion working constantly and living so close to the Moondrop was that he was always visible. He'd never admit he's the most expensive person to bodyguard in the world, but it's true. An old lady would push him aside to save him from getting hit by a car. Everyday people turned in their own neighbors - Wasps and otherwise - for concocting assassination plots. In No.6, he's more safe than anyone else. Out here, especially if he's alone and on vacation, he's a sitting duck. If I wanted to take out my enemy, I'd do it when access is easiest and there are few eyes on him."

The topic started to turn Nezumi's blood hot and cold. A wish to find the nearest trafficker and carve hexes into their skin until they admit how much they wanted Shion dead, only to be granted mercy with fifty holes in his neck, simmered. Then the thought of Shion being knocked out, dragged, and thrown onto a table to be tormented with grimy needles and blades snap-freezed his organs. Intellectually he had enough doubts in Rikiga's claims to not buy the theory. It's just as likely someone inside the government could be a Wasp and knew every blind spot in the security to act at the best possible time. With no suspects and no unusual evidence to point in any direction, Nezumi had no strong opinion to lean towards. However, when it came to Shion, his rational mind had a way of getting swept away by flights of fancy and worst case scenarios. No matter how long ago the spiked drink incident was, Nezumi had to dismiss thoughts of giving that man his just desserts.

"You still have doubts," grumbled Rikiga.

Sighing, Nezumi stroked Ink's nose when it emerged from the superfibre cloth. "So should you until we have something material to work on. Keep investigating." He brushed the crumbs off his lap and stood up with his tray of empty plates. "Since you're scared of rodents, what do you think of ferrets?"

Rikiga stared dumbfounded. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Ferrets. Never heard of them? In the same family as weasels, otters, and wolverines? They're carnivores who hunt rats and rabbits while still being small and sneaky like cats -"

"I know what ferrets are, you smug prick. I'm asking what they have to do with Shion!"

"And here I was offering to let you have a friendly competition with my greatest creation a princess of the storm kingdom named after a splotch of black writing fluid. Suit yourself then! I guess it'll take twice as long to get anything out of the bureau with my lack of contacts!"

He left Rikiga sputtering and cursing his name, only for his raving to cease abruptly when Nezumi was halfway out the cafeteria. His lip curled into a satisfied sideways smirk. Food in his belly and Ranko safe in Shion's room, Nezumi left Kyakhta Memorial and Teaching Hospital and walked out into the central district of No.3 to a small theatre that gave him a small job working backstage for a production opening in three weeks. Any little coin helped until a steadier opportunity arises or Shion wakes up.

* * *

Wisps tended to be tricksters in mythology, fairy tales, and literature. Something about this presence he had no other name for continued to drift in and out of his sphere of consciousness. A gentle melody telegraphed its coming. Said melody changed tempos and tunes not unlike the wind, but its core essence remained unchanged.

The little spirit nudged him away from the aster and out of the field that he called home. Perhaps that was its plan; lure souls like him out of their refuge where it would tease and torment him relentlessly for clinging to foolish ideas and dreams. Worse, he knew the truth in such a wake-up call. He had received them daily at one point in his life, a bitter medicine he swallowed without a spoonful of sugar for his throat or clamps for his nose.

He probably made a thousand excuses to not leave this spot, where the aster and all the other flowers have died from lack of sunlight, rain, and nutritious soil, but he had little other options. He had promised he'd wait and wait until the day that promise, lingering between wind-stirred ashes of cherry blossom petals long disintegrated, would be fulfilled.

And yet, the wisp always returned. It annoyed him. It wouldn't leave him alone. It threatened to tear him away from this sanctuary. Or was it a prison? He didn't know anymore.

He just wanted to be left alone. He had to keep waiting, alone, even if he waits forever. Even if he's wrinkled and old. Even if he didn't read all the books left in the world. Even if he never got to truly fight for his rights. Even if he never has sex, especially when the only person he ever wanted never bothered to returned the heart he stole and took on a one-way journey to infinity.

Yet the wisp kept coming back.

Its stubbornness, its concern for him, its melody tickled him unlike anything else. Unlike anything but -

_Sometimes the world is a valley of heartaches and tears_  
_And in the hustle and bustle the sunshine appears_  
_But you and I have a love always there to remind us_  
_There is a way we can leave all the shadows behind us_

Is... Is that...?

_Volaré, oh oh_  
_Cantaré, oh oh oh oh_  
_No wonder my heavy heart sings_  
_Your love has given me wings_

A gust engulfed him, pulling him away from the field and towards the wisp that carried the song. He never had a chance to look back at the aster, abandoned once more.

* * *

When her father wasn't there, Karan would sit beside Shion and read to him, Sion, and Ranko any one of the piles of books from the library on the second floor. Hospitals lost most of their horror just from being in a room with walls that changed environments - from deserts to rainforests to exotic planets recreated from fiction - to calm more claustrophobic and isolated patients. Ranko had never imagined a place of sickness, healing, death, and birth would have literature beside science as companions. Even an elderly nurse who checked on Shion around noon would recite poems by Edgar Allen Poe, Seong Sam-mun, and Alexander Blok from heart when asked.

Sometimes Karan or her father would only read excerpts from a book of Ranko's or Sion's choosing, but once a story seized her heart, she asked for nothing but the tale to reach it's end. They had finished _The Hobbit_ once March turned to April, and they just started to read _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ once Karan decided to return to No.6 and arrange her and Shion's finances to pay the bills. Ken arrived two days before to keep her company on the long flight and bring Sion back home so he could return to school.

The night before they left, Karan, Ken, Rikiga, Sion, her father, and Ranko shared a humble dinner in Shion's room. Arriving five minutes later with desert was a tall woman with brilliant green eyes dressed in a two-piece business suit and sneakers. Everyone called her Ikue and everyone seemed fond of her. All but her father, who gave short, diplomatic answers to her if he acknowledged her at all. No one seemed to notice - or admitted to have noticed - his evasive behavior around her, but Ken later stated that her father and Ikue did not start off on the best foot when they first met.

Rather than have it be a solemn occasion, everyone talked and laughed as if Shion were really with them. "He wouldn't want us to be sad in his company," Karan had said in the same spirit as Yako when her father had fainted. They spoke of nothing but fond memories and stories and jokes that portrayed lives that had enough to survive without fear but not having so much that they knew nothing of hardship.

When they finished their meal, everyone's eyes turned to Ink's projection of an old anime series Karan and Rikiga had watched when they were children. Only twenty episodes aired until Japan ceased most anime productions because the Third World War reached their doorstep. Sion told Ranko he used to pretend to be Mighty Atom on the playground and wanted to become an animator if he had the artistic ability. Despite it's limited range in colors, Ranko was spellbound by the visuals only drawings could convey and how music and sound were interwoven with the story in an intimate dance. She learned it was possible to pull one's imagination from their mind and create the perfect visual not limited by reality.

Mere minutes before visiting hours ended, Karan had one last request. "Nezumi, would you please sing for us?"

Ranko saw apprehension flash in her father's eyes for a second, but peace replaced it when he agreed. Him taking a sip of water was the prime time for teasing oddly absent. Ken's jovial mockery had ceased, and Rikiga waited eagerly for the first note. No one made made a preference for what kind of song, only that her father pour everything into his voice and whisk them away for a while longer before they would part.

_The pearls at the bottom of the sea,_  
_The stars winking in the midnight sky,_  
_And the love resting in my heart,_  
_All that glitters I give to you_

_The pearls beneath the rough seas shatter,_  
_Stars high in stormy skies disappear,_  
_And yet my love remains unchanged,_  
_As many generations pass_

_All that glitters for eternity_  
_Are just for you and you alone._

The melancholic yet loping tune ended with Rikiga and Ikue mopping their eyes with tissues. Sion made a humorous face that his mother addressed with an unusually pointed look for their usual teasing demeanor, and Karan stroked the arm of the minstrel who poured too much of his self in the song and whose gaze did not leave the closed eyes of the only sleeping audience member. He decomposed himself quickly, and her father took a deep breath and chose another song, more upbeat and folky that compelled everyone to clap along to the beat.

Of the songs he performed that night, Ranko liked the first one the most. She admired how much her father left himself vulnerable and honest about something he had never made known outside of himself but late at night when he believed no one could hear his cries. A close second, however, was the final song he made slightly cheerier than the version Ranko had heard her music teacher perform in the show and tell at the daycare center in No.4. Karan seemed fond of and familiar with it too, as she joined her father in singing after the first line.

_May the road rise to meet you,_  
_May the wind be always at your back,_  
_May the sun shine warm upon your face,_  
_And rains fall soft upon your fields,_  
_And until we meet again,_  
_May God hold you in the hollow of His hand._

Ranko could spend her entire life with everyone here and still know too little about them. She hoped her father would stay close to them, even Ikue, who had plenty of stories about her simple life with her own papa before meeting Shion. She didn't need the textbook definition of family if this group of people stuck together for years despite their lack of connection by blood. Whenever it happens, Shion waking up would complete this portrait of perfection. They had to wait and wait and wait. They had no other choice; nothing would fill the space Shion left. So Ranko visited Shion every day and sang songs or read books with words she could pronounce.

* * *

Weeks passed. May arrived.

Her father had enrolled Ranko in a local school for preschoolers to continue her education. As they created a new normal in another city-state, he continued to play supporting roles in the theatre he worked for until he caught the attention of an old acquaintance from No.1. His former understudy pushed and pushed until the Trans-Siberian Academy of Performing Arts offered him the only role that he was born to play. When he announced it over Children's Day rice cakes in their studio apartment next to the station on the same line as the one across the street from the hospital, it may as well have been Ranko's birthday. The play would debut on July 15, giving a generous two-month window of hope for the miracle they waited for. And they could buy better clothes and furniture now that her father didn't need to pour everything into Ranko's school, meals, and rent for the apartment.

Religion never played a huge role in Ranko's development; her father held an agnostic if not apathetic stance on the matter. Sometimes between the end of the day in kindergarten to visiting the hospital before dinner time, Ranko would walk past a church one of her classmates attended every Sunday. She liked the meticulous architecture and paintings displaying a committed love for something intangible and believed to not exist to those who lacked belief. Even those without belief could speak of experiences with language that invoked some semblance of spirituality.

Her father had spoken of meeting Shion as a miracle. The existence of a being like Eluyrias and the stories of gods passed from generation to generation made Ranko wonder how much of the world was beyond understanding and if it would take pity on humans worthy or lucky enough for a miracle. Her father never admitted to thinking it, but Ranko suspected it every time his eyes fell on the necklace she had kept safe for him. She certainly wished for a miracle every time she visited Shion or something in the world or in her father's stories reminded her of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once this fanfic has finally left my system, I will need to be permanently institutionalized for being driven insane by sugar overdose. Good grief, sometimes this fic tastes like diabetes when I read it to make edits. I promise you I am not this melodramatic and sappy in real life.
> 
> Or maybe I'm super stealthy about being a bit sentimental. IDK, all the more reason to hate No.6 for ruining my life. I even have the novels and the manga available for offline reading if I'm stuck on a desert island (aka the first two weeks I was abroad). Again, Asano-san, you are evil. >.<


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How long have I been here? Who is this girl?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to make a drinking game out of who cries and how often in this fic. I think I need to change the title to 'Children of Tears' at this rate.

"Give me again all that was there,  
Give me the sun that shone!  
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,  
Give me the lad that’s gone!"

― Robert Louis Stevenson, "Sing Me a Song of a Lad That Is Gone"

* * *

_A young girl with red shoes  
_ _Was taken away by a foreigner_

He hadn't slept so deeply in such a long time. His body shifted out of REM sleep and began to assemble different pieces of the environment around him.

_She rode on a ship from Yokohama pier,_  
_Taken away by a foreigner_

The soft, distinct rhythmic beep of a heart monitor. Plastic clamped to his nose to bring crisp oxygen to his lungs. The distinct artificial aroma of disinfectant. Fluffy fibers of a blanket covering his arms and legs not covered by cotton. Itchy needles lodged in his arm, likely to administer nutrients and/or medicine.

But what captured his senses the most intently was the voice. A young, gentle voice of delicate buds of baby's breath.

_I imagine right now she has become blue-eyed,_  
_Living in that foreigner's land_

It brought him calm and anxiety all at once. The voice was supremely, almost supernaturally gifted for being pure and unblemished by the ailments of affliction and pollution to the throat. Yet the voice had the control of one who was trained by someone with greater knowledge and experience. He suspected the teacher had an impossibly beautiful voice too.

And the way the voice carried the tune with vibrato reminded him of another singer he heard on a dilapidated stage, in the back of a crowded truck, beside a dying man in agony, before dozens of eyes glowing in an underground sanctuary, on a balcony above a city on fire, and by his ear in a small bed they had shared.

_Every time I see red shoes, I think of her,  
_ _And every time I meet a foreigner, I think of her_

His eyelids no longer felt heavy. The fluorescent light assaulted his eyes, but he patiently allowed his body to adjust from black to white. The voice started again from the beginning of a girl raised by a stranger in a strange land. Sion once complained about learning the song for his class' performance during the cultural festival. As he never was exposed to traditional or classic folk songs while growing up, he didn't mind it once he heard a version sung in a debut production at the Eve Community Theatre. To hear a child sing an old song that skipped a generation of native Japanese speakers moved him.

When his eyes opened at last, a halo of red clouds framed the head of a little girl, barely five, sitting on the left side of the bed. Part of her face that was in view had a shade of dark skin he had only seen in the representatives and politicians from No.1, No.2, and No.4. A skin tone that darkened considerably under prolonged exposure to UV radiation and was found in a number of different ethnic groups that made identifying her considerably difficult if one relied on rigid methodologies from 19th century anthropology and 20th century political misappropriations of science.

And on her shoulder sat a white mouse with glowing red eyes.

_Chit-chit!_

_Chirp cheep?!_

_Cheeeeeeeep!!!_

_CHEET CHEET CHEET!!!!_

Mice and rats of all shapes, colors, and sizes brought down an avalanche of violent affection on his face and neck. Somewhere between the squeaks, scratches, and nibbles from critters he had never met, he recognized Oscar's three-toed front-right paw, Virga's abnormally dry nose, and Hakugin's low growls he stole from an adult Yorkie. Between them, he felt the cold, less frequent, yet infinitely more gentle strokes of a mechanical mouse - the white one that alerted the others of him waking up.

Between the mountains of euphoric fur, the girl had stopped singing and stared at him with bulging, bug-like eyes. He scolded himself for making such a comparison, for her irises were a lighter shade of brown than her skin. In the current lighting, they were the color of chestnuts, not too far removed from his own and his mothers' that matched the kochiba color used in dying kimono.

"H-Hi..." he wheezed. It must have been unconscious for several days if he lost his voice this much. The rodents gave him room to move as he cleared his throat, swallowed some saliva, and tried again. "Hi. Did I scare you?"

She said nothing. All that changed were her eyelids, blinking back thick droplets of tears. Her body twitched, telegraphing her want to lunge towards him like the mice and rats did. The critters even made way for her in case she gave into the impulse to do so. Using every ounce of strength to deny feeling something far greater than oneself at such a young age festered a growing feeling of déjà vu within him. No child should be taught to conceal her emotions, no matter how tragic.

"It's okay," he said, stroking her arm with the tips of his fingers that could reach her. "Whatever you're feeling now... it's not wrong. Don't ever be afraid to cry."

On cue the dam broke quickly and violently. Hiccuping and wailing, she threw herself on top of him. Her face burrowed in the crook of his neck and her fists gripped his hospital robe like a raft floating out at sea saving her from imminent death.

 

_"Shion... I-I don't know how to stop my tears, Shion... I can't... I can't st-stop them..."_

 

A slow-moving blue-furred mouse climbed her and settled in the nest of curly hair. Shion patted her back as she expressed the exhaustion of a pain too big for her little body to carry. He wondered who her parents were and where they were. In between sobs and coughs, she fished some words like "papa", "sad", and "dead". She was in no state to clarify, so he held her as she cried to her very limit. A puny brown mouse dragged as many tissues as its mouth could carry to the girl when she sat upright and wiped her nose with her arm. She thanked the creature - "Mocha" - and blew her nose as the rats - "Sunny" and "Nelo" - used the rest to help clean up Cinderella.

"Do you feel better?"

"I-I..." Free springs of curls bounced when she sneezed into a tissue. Her shrill squeak was nearly mistakes for a mouse. "I don't know..."

"It's okay if you don't know. Sometimes what we feel doesn't make any sense."

The girl made a pitiful frown that children her age still over-exaggerate to the point their faces look like lumpy potatoes. "I don't like it. Why don't adults know things?"

Shion couldn't help but smile and shrug in resignation. His work kept him away from children, leaving Sion his only connection to simpler fascinations and views of the world. They knew a lot more than most adults assume, and this girl seemed bright and well-read for what he guessed was four or five years old. She even spoke fluent Japanese. Children possessed an uncanny ability to adapt to and learn almost anything in their environment and from the people raising them. While she bore no stereotypical resemblance to an ethnic Japanese person, she was one based on her name, her speech, her perceptions, and the people raising her.

"What's your name?"

She threw the balls of tissue into the trash can in the corner by a chair beside his IV and gave Shion her attention. "R-Ranko."

_"Ranko"? I wonder how it's written. Is it "ran" like "indigo", "orchid", "war"?_ "Pleased to meet you, Ranko. I'm Shion."

"I-I know," she mumbled, eyes darting to the left for a second.

Shion shifted in the bed and managed to sit upright without pulling out his IV and intravenous nutrient tube. The walls of his room displayed a hologram of the ocean with the florescent light as the sun. Near the door to the decompression chamber between his room and the hallway of the ICU was a tower of green, orange, and pink corals that starfish and crabs made their home. Ranko's pale blue sundress made a perfect camouflage for a butterflyfish or damselfish and her long, curly hair for clownfish.

_How long have I been here? Who is this girl?_

"You have a beautiful voice," he said after another moment of silence.

"Th-Thank you..." Ranko's cheeks turned a shade of dark seeded cherries. Politeness came to her as naturally as breathing, rare even in aduts.

"Who taught you how to sing?"

"My papa," she said like her mouth was full of cotton balls. As nervous as she seemed, her eyes lit up like any child would at the thought of their parent.

"He must be very proud of you, Ranko."

She shrugged and averted her gaze again, hiding the very happiness she just emitted. Her shyness typical of more introverted children contrasted starkly from the ease and confidence of her singing. Shion wondered if she was naturally expressive or if she picked up on exaggerated tics from a parent who tended to be dramatic with their emotions. Even if that was true, she seemed a well behaved and raised child.

He decided that was the next logical topic to move to. "Are you here alone? Where is your papa?"

Ranko shook her head, but not enough to send the mouse in her hair flying towards the wall or the divider glass. Three visitors spoke amongst themselves as they passed Shion's room. "I'm not alone. Everyone follows me everywhere."

Many of the newly acquainted mice and rats lined up on Shion's lap and looked up him with awe. Several bore the same grape-colored eyes as Hakugin and Virga. Each critter expressed a distinct vocalization or movement fitting of their ages and personalities as Ranko explained their namesake. She saved Seldon, the old mouse sleeping in her hair, for last. Her reasons for naming some of them seemed advanced for a young girl of preschool age, particularly the one named after a fictional mathematics professor.

The albino robot mouse named Snow had climbed Shion's shoulder, got his attention, and scanned his face. It rubbed it's head against Shion's cheek and returned to curl in a content ball on Ranko's lap. "He sees bad guys from far away," said Ranko. "Snow talks to Ink all the time. Ink's with papa. Papa always knows where I am."

Whatever grabbed her tongue had allowed her to start talking at great length about herself. The mice likely kept with her to avoid being taken by strangers, and her inconsistent wariness implied her papa taught her a little about being careful around strangers.

"What does your papa do?" asked Shion.

She shrugged again, but this time her eyes did not leave Shion's. "Papa's an actor. He likes it more than his other job. He used to get hurt a lot. He sings and acts now... but he's still sad..."

An actor for a parent explained some of her exaggerated expressions. "Why do you think that is?"

"I-I don't know..."

Her defensiveness reappeared, closing a door to a room Shion couldn't help but have a budding curiosity towards Ranko. Since his mice bonded to her, he wondered how much Ranko already knew about him. She seemed to trust him despite some of her wariness. Her affinity and affection for furry, intelligent rodents made her even more endearing.

Before he could ask her another question, a doctor entered the room with an air of relief and happiness her kind rarely displayed with such openness. She gave Ranko a bag of boortsog and told her to meet with "Uncle Rikiga" in the cafeteria. _Rikiga's here?_ Hakugin, Oscar, Seldon, and Sunny chose to stay with Shion, which the doctor allowed.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Vice President?" she asked in English, handing him an unopened bottle of water.

"Just Shion, please." Shion's eyes did not leave Ranko as she waved at him in the decontamination chamber between his room and the hallway. He smiled back to his visitor before addressing his condition. "I'm a bit tired, but it'll pass in a few minutes."

The doctor nodded and made a note on her tablet before placing it on the bed. She gestured for him to drink as she changed the language and translation settings on her ID bracelet. His doctor - Nikita, according to the holographic sleeve on her lab coat - muttered her annoyance for her bracelet in Hindi. The Global Census Bureau found in 2024 that only 538 people in the world spoke it, and only 20% of them did so as their first language. Not enough to have it join the eight recognized globally, but still worthy of preservation.

"How long was I out?" he asked when Ranko disappeared from view in the hallway.

Doctor Nikita smiled when her device cooperated and informed them they can speak their native tongues without problems. "Today is May 16, 2027. You have been in a coma for seventy days, Mr. Vice - er, Shion. Do you know where you are?"

Reflecting upon his memories like seeking a lost file in a cabinet, Shion frowned. Until he stumbled upon something useful, he recognized letters from the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets on the border of Doctor Nikita's tablet and on ceiling signs in the hallway. "I'm in the ICU of a hospital in No.3, either Siberian General or Kyakhta Memorial and Teaching."

"Hmm, your cognitive functions seem normal so far." She muttered the note she made before answering, "This is Kyakhta Memorial. Forgive the hundreds of questions. Your general physician and therapist in No.6 have asked me to assess your wellbeing while you are here. What is the last thing you can remember?"

Enough time had passed and his condition had been serious enough for his doctors to grant permission for a foreign doctor to access his medical history through the Global Census Directory. Her questions related to his brain, and with the previous details this meant he may have been in a coma. Depending on the cause and how long he had been in this condition, any possible brain damage could range from minimal to severe.

Shion closed his eyes and looked back to find an oblique shadow the size of a glacier obscuring and distorting time between leaving his hotel after dinner to waking up a few minutes ago. The fog that carried him through each day had compounded and localized to such a degree that hardly anything broke through the radio silence.

 

_"I... traveler wear... n... really... had a... named..."_

_"M... chick... thy... to the... fair thou..."_

 

After a minute, he found some familiar fragments to prove he did not lose too much of himself. "I had an extra day to explore No.3 before my flight back to No.6 on the morning of March 9, so I visited the ghost _selo_ of Troitskoye to the south. I returned to my hotel around 19:29 to have dinner with a friend and decided to go back out again at 21:41. I'm afraid I don't remember anything after that."

The doctor stood on Shion's right, adjusting his IV drip and checking his blood pressure. "Junior Legal Consultant Ikue can corroborate that. She was the last known person to see you before the fisherman carried you out of the Irtysh River."

_Wait. What?_

She expected his wide-eyed bafflement. With a bit more tact she slowed her speech as if he knew what exactly she said without a translator. "On Tuesday, March 9 at 00:32 a fisherman living in a hamlet two kilometers north of the border was out rowing with his son when he found you caught on a rock at water's edge. When he called for help, he claimed you were dead. Your lungs were full of water, but you were still alive, hypothermic and delirious. The son tried to help you while they waited for the ambulance. You were clinically dead for thirty seconds when we arrived, but we resuscitated you before you suffered severe brain damage from cerebral hypoxia."

Shion massaged the bridge of his nose as he processed what she said. The medical terminology didn't bother him; Safu had used to soliloquize for hours about the complexities of hormones, neurons, and diseases that relate to them. He could still recite word-for-word her lecture on the correlation between psychiatric diseases and thyroid storms in adolescents if one dared to ask. He didn't even struggle to understand why parts of his memory were missing; Safu had helped him understand the causes and treatments of amnesia and memory repression in the Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology class they shared when they were fourteen. She would have made the perfect health advocate right now.

He wondered was how his life had come to this. How his whole life of losing what little he had led to him being in a hospital far from home after a stranger pulled him out of a river in the middle of a late-winter night. Some details reminded him of a bleak book he once had borrowed from the public library he helped build in West Block that he could not recall at the moment.

Doctor Nikita wrote additional notes in Shion's file, likely documenting his silence as a positive or negative he could not yet ascertain. She looked upon him with sympathy. "That's the short version. I was told you were a resilient man who could handle the truth, but we can discuss this further as you regain your strength. You will need to stay here for about two weeks at least."

"I see..." he muttered, stroking the top of Seldon's head like he was a king. The mouse bowed his head and chirped his pleasure. Shion appreciated the doctor's lack of coddling more than her unloading too much information at once. If he were to receive so much information, he'd prefer to know more about if he will be alone in his recovery. Sensing his worry, Sunny and Hakugin squeaked with fervor and certainty. He didn't doubt them, but he wondered who was in No.3.

"Don't worry, Shion. The GCD has sent a notification to your family the moment you woke up." The doctor revealed the confirmation message of the scheduled action on her tablet while giving him a new IV drip. "Your mother Karan is in No.6, but I'm certain she will arrive in a heartbeat to see you. Ranko has probably told Rikiga and Ariel by now, so expect visitors tonight and tomorrow. As you are still gathering your bearings, if you are distressed, press the help button and my team will help you."

"I will, thank you," said Shion, holding up the device in his left hand.

The smile he made felt odd, stiff and forced when he didn't want it to be. Doctor Nikita did not react if her patient struggled to smile properly unless she documented his fake expression and pretended for the sake of manners. Shion didn't know which option was worse.

As promised, Shion received a visit from Rikiga thirty minutes later. Always quick to any emotion - anger, happiness, sadness, or fear - without any shame, Rikiga practically collapsed to the floor and bawled over the "miracle" of Shion waking up. His display, so loud and expressive, had to end prematurely with the mice scaring him until he nearly pissed himself. The scene ended with a grey long-snouted creature peaked its nose from Rikiga's coat, terrifying the mice back to Shion and their sister. No wonder Ranko tried so hard to keep her emotions under control. Shion wondered if she naturally tried to stay composed in turbulent moments or if her father instilled this behavior in her.

"Don't torment me so, Ranko!" Rikiga lamented with a dejected moan. The grey animal - a ferret with glossy eyes not unlike Snow's - chattered an enthused hello from its place on its master's shoulder. "You're a pure, gentle soul that has been immune to the evil within your father. Please don't ever let yourself become as callous and scheming as that pest."

_Cheep, cheep!_ Mocha and Murasaki squealed their objections while Ranko blew a loud, obnoxious raspberry. Rikiga nearly had a stroke from witnessing such a brazen display of defiance, and Shion felt the muscles in his face twitch upward in a way that felt unnatural. When their eyes met, Ranko let out a huge, toothy grin she tried to save but revealed too early. The girl seemed too bright and happy to be real. Like a playful wisp bobbing among budding flowers in a secluded grove in a forest far from the destructive hands of civilization. Confining, angular walls of city buildings did not suit a spirit with an affinity for the untamed spirals of nature.

_She feels familiar somehow..._

"Karan's on the way, kid," said Rikiga, offering the patient a glass of water from the dinner tray a nurse brought in. His ferret jumped onto the bed, ignored the timid mice, and curled itself around Shion's arm. "There were delays with court proceedings, so Ikue's stuck in No.6 for another week. Busy season just kicked off, so Ken and Sion will call once everyone else is here. They'll drown you in love until you give the rest of their family a good, long bath."

"I don't doubt it," said Shion after finishing the glass in one huge gulp. "Ken is nothing less than persistent."

The older man folded his arms and nodded. "The mutt probably got the best deal outta all of us. Little Sion might have softened them up, but they'll never give up a huge business deal, even if the planet explodes in a great ball of fire. Hope they remember to call -"

"They will, Rikiga."

He laughed. "Never stop being an optimist, kid."

When Rikiga pointed at his communication chit, Shion tried to recall where his was. No one found it on his person when he was found, and satellites have failed to track it. Either it broke or it ran out of battery after being left somewhere unattended. Never before had he felt naked and incomplete without a piece of technology that made life easy. At least he technically had a choice to throw his ID bracelet when he was on the run, even if doing so would have killed him. To have something taken without his awareness or control made him feel impotent, as everyone is in the grand scheme of the universe.

He shelved his musings and kept the original topic going. "How's mom?"

"Beyond happy you're awake. She's been doing everything to make sure you return home and transition back to normal safely and comfortably. Running the bakery, paying your bills, and keeping your apartment tidy. I don't know what tough stuff she's made of, but you're Karan's son alright. Even Ikue, President Sosuke, and the committee members have worked overtime to keep your work alive."

Shion tilted his head downward to avert his eyes from anyone who could see how red they must be. "I'm sorry for worrying everyone."

"Apologize like that again and I'll smack you," warned Rikiga with a huff. Ranko nodded with a fierce nod. "No one blames you for what happened, and you're worth staying up all night over. All apologizing does is insult us for caring. It's bad enough that the world is full of selfish assholes - hell, I'm afraid to say I'm one of them - so don't dismiss what good people offer you!"

Shame flowed through Shion's bloodstream. He expressed his thoughts wrong; he never intended to come across as ungrateful for anything his family and friends and coworkers have done in his absence. There was no proper word or phrase to articulate how much it hurt to work longer hours than one should, to perform work without any recognition or thanks, to put one's needs aside for another for sensible yet senseless reasons. No one knew this better than a young man who put everything aside for nine years over something so small, both sensible and senseless.

Carrying his mechanical pet on his shoulder once more, Rikiga excused himself from the room to take a call, leaving Shion alone with Ranko and the mice again. This time the girl seemed more relaxed with a worn, silver-bound edition of _The Snow Queen_ on her lap. Her fingers tapped a soft tempo melody on the cover with her eyes darting between Shion and the hallway on the other side of the mirror.

_She must be waiting for her father._ "Does your papa read to you?"

He barely knew her, yet he felt a familiar fondness of how she smiled like he had always known someone whose lips arched with a delicate dichotomy of expressing happiness in a subdued manner while still holding nothing back. "All the time! He reads everything. I don't like the kids' books and picture books at school.

"Why?"

"They're boring. I don't like stories about talking food or kids being good. Papa's stories are sad, scary, and weird, but I learn a lot."

"So you like books about life?"

"No! I like hard books. Papa always tells me what I don't know. He doesn't treat me like a kid. I like books that treat me like Papa does."

_If she grew up with classical literature and fairy tales, no wonder she doesn't like colorful instructional books about growing up. Still, it's amazing she can read on her own at this age._

Ranko lifted up the book to Shion. Silently begging for him to join in her hobby, Mocha, Seldon, and Snow climbed up her arm, sat at attention on the cover, and widened their wet tender eyes. Shion had fallen out of practice, but he opened the book and read aloud with the little rodents curled around him. He had never read this tale before, and he had to re-read a few lines to get the feeling of the prose right. Even with his mistakes, everyone seemed content with Shion's performance.

A young girl roaming the world through traps and past odd characters to find her lost love and bring him home from the throes of the queen of winter and the shards of a mirror that ailed his heart. Shion found too many moments he related with to the point his chest ached. He continued reading, preferring to die than admit he wished his problems could be solved as easily as Gerda's. No man of twenty five could afford to be sentimental.

Rikiga had returned to the room exasperated about something about midway through the tale, but his temper softened as he joined Story Time Circle with Shion. He thought of nothing but how he wasn't expressive enough, how he could never do justice the story spilling between his lips. A fog of uncertainty bundled itself around his neck as he tried like he never tried in his life. The fight against that feeling that had claimed his missing memories in a locked back reached a fever point when Greda and Kay returned home to the old woman as adults after the long journey ended in a tearful reunion.

Ranko had tucked herself between Shion's arm and side and bore a serene expression he did not think him worthy of.

"'The roses on the roof looked in at the open window, and their two little stools were still out there. Kay and Gerda sat down on them, and held each other by the hand. Both of them had forgotten the icy, empty splendor of the Snow Queen's palace as completely as if it were some bad dream. Grandmother sat in God's good sunshine, reading to them from her Bible: 'Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' Kay and Gerda looked into each other's eyes, and at last they understood the meaning of their old hymn: Where roses bloom so sweetly in the vale, there shall you find the Christ Child, without fail.'"

"'And there they sat, grown-up and yet still children, children at heart. And it was summer, warm, glorious summer.'"

Another voice had overlapped with Shion's. Still, calm, yet full of the dramatic timbre and grace Shion will always lack. Older, deeper, but unchanged. A hair breathy from running as fast as possible, but controlled and strong enough to perform with dignified poise. A scent followed the voice. Woodsy - pines and trees of pollinated flowers - only slightly masked by the tingling chemicals of makeup remover. The speaker did not make his presence known before speaking, a natural reflex spies and thieves would kill for.

 

_Long cold fingers pry his fist open and slip between his in a knitted fold. Kinetic contact gentle and kind when his voice needs to be harsh and firm. The contrast is enough to send his heart into a frenzy._

_"This is just the beginning. You won't last long if you're so tense..."_

 

Impossible. It was simply impossible.

 

_"No more secrets, no more lies. No more goodbye kisses. I swear to you on this handsome face you punched the shit out of."_

 

_Liar. Stop lying to make me 'feel better'._

The nurses flocked to his side as Doctor Nikita promised. Much of the chaos - shouting, crying, and screeching - that erupted faded with a simple injection to remove what doesn't belong, what's nothing more than a side effect of brain damage overlooked and undetectable unless under unusual amounts of stress.

In hindsight he should have known immediately that something was amiss; in his reflection on the glass wall between his room and the hallway his hair was snow white and eyes violet. The doctor should have known his condition was severe enough that allowing visitors was a hazard to the patient and anyone who came in contact with him. He'd hate to see how disappointed his mother would be for being turned away, but she needed to see her son when he's well.

The situation will right itself when he awakes from sedation. Now if the world would be kind to him for once, Shion would prefer to forget why his thumb, purple and swollen, needed a splint.

* * *

Everything had caught up to him in a way Nezumi never anticipated. Before Nikita could advise him to keep his distance from her patient, he did not enter the room with Karan and Ikue, tending to Shion as the sedative did its job. It wore off enough for the man to awaken, but he remained at ease with a reguar - if slightly slowed - heartrate.

Nezumi watched Shion speak to Ikue after comforting his mother. Much like that day exactly five years ago, they had a relaxed energy between them that sparked neither into petty debates over the minutia of any topic. She made Shion smile and laugh in spite of what happened a few days ago. Even with her crass voice, she convinced Ranko to try to see the patient again, although she would sit on a seat several feet away and only spoke about the books she read. The lawyer had a way of filling voids Nezumi left in the people he met.

When Shion opened a bento box with cherry cake inside, Ikue stole a moment to glance over her shoulder. Her eyes met Nezumi's and she studied him like he was a microscopic organism worthy of detailed examination. Every time they met, her posture and eageriness telegraphed a desire to strap him down for an interrogation with a list of questions growing longer and longer every time the two crossed paths.

Being watched by the woman by Shion's side and the doctor who knew Nezumi was a theat to her patient, there was no telling if he would allow himself in that space again. Clearly Shion needed a safe world without Nezumi, lest his appearance shake the foundation of his life yet again when he was at his most vulnerable.

 

_"We've performed a few tests now that he's alert. His therapist in No.6 has informed me she diagnosed him with dysthymia and post traumatic stress. I don't believe his anxiety attack had anything to do with his injuries or the coma. We'll slowly reintroduce his medications to continue treatment. After another careful examination of his prescriptions, he had stopped taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor known for triggering manic episodes with accompanying amnesia. Everything he's on now is much safer, but with how long he has been taking them, we cannot predict how his body can cope with sudden changes to his biochemistry._

_"I cannot imagine what Shion has gone through. I'm so sorry."_

 

Nikita had patiently emphasized to everyone in her office that none of them were at fault for Shion's condition with little success. The lawyer dismantled her argument with a fine-toothed comb and had another shouting match with Rikiga until Karan breaking down reminded them the ones who needed the comfort so thoroughly deconstructed. Nezumi gave her his shoulder as she did for him as he waited for his feelings to surface. They never did.

Finally he had run out of tears to shed. Finally he felt nothing inside him. It took nearly fourteen years for it to happen, but Nezumi could finally look at Shion, think of Shion, and feel nothing. Life finally gave him exactly what he wanted and needed in order to survive.

Footsteps approached him. He eyed the doctor knowingly and rewrapped the superfibre cloth around his sleeveless shirt.

"He's improved significantly," she said with a smile. "You can visit him now if you like."

_Why? So he can say I'm nothing but a ghost or a hallucination?_ Instead of voicing those thoughts, Nezumi held up his ID bracelet, displaying the white stone walls adorned with murals of the theater. "Got rehearsals and practice until dawn."

How quickly her smile morphed into a frown proved how insincere her request really was. "You're the only family he hasn't seen again."

"Technically we're not related."

"What does that matter when you sent the entire hospital into disorder just to get to this room? Only you and Ranko have visited every day, and now he's awake you won't even look at the door."

"Thank you for your concern, but you're not my mother, ma'am."

"Ariel, he needs to see you in controlled and safe environments like now in order to -"

Nezumi cut her off with a glare. "I'm late for work."

From the moment he turned on his heel to the second he entered his dressing room, a pair of eyes bore into his back. He ignored the sensation until he emerged on stage and drifted between the actors like air. He lured the others into traps with extravagant clothes and tables with scrumptious food, driving them mad with visions a dehydrated, lost sailor would experience when shipwrecked on a barren island embued with magic.

Now he was the eye, judging the wretched fools who so easily fell prey to simple illusions.

* * *

Regardless of the exclusive economic, political, or scientific contributions she provided to the international table, each city-state had a thriving scene for the arts. The passion for sharing the auditory, performative, and visual arts from anyone with the knowledge - shallow and fragmented or thorough and immaculate - helped reinvigorate society in the post-war age. Medicine and technology could not heal the scars and wound the intangible, the subjective, the spiritual inflicted onto the entire human race.

Too few could bear the fact that the wars destroyed 13,000 years of human growth. Attempting to imagine the breadth and implications of that loss drove many well-respected intellectuals to madness. Not a day after the news about the human population's 400 million milestone, the leading quantum physicist from No.2 leapt off the roof of his university laboratory. He left a single block of text that appeared on each of his interconnected devices in his native Spanish:

"1962: 3.15 billion. 1992: 285 million. 92.4% of humanity gone. Saint Peter has expelled our brothers and sisters from Heaven and barred the gates. May the disciples, Moses, the prophets, and kings of Israel keep the Lord Jesus and our Father company. We have damned ourselves and our redeemed kin."

While not Christian herself, a Project Rediscover photographer left a similar letter of resignation and despair on the dinner table where she drank lassi dosed with cyanide.

What followed these deaths were improvized folk festivals and feasts full of comfort food, warm drink, and wistful tales of bygone times. Simple pleasures impossible to revive completely somehow brought peace and solace to individuals, but time would determine if the sychronized global cry of children torn from the bosoms of their mothers was a panacea or a placebo for their collective agony.

Having had a few months to process this himself, Nezumi was careful to not decline every offer to join his coworkers to the local tavern every midweek. The habitual after-work get-together inspired some of the actors to improve their technique, and an understudy earned a promotion when he gained the confidence to use the set of pipes he hid for three years in the theater. Even the manager - who never learned Vietnamese from his grandfather before the flu claimed him - took a liking to the hurdygurdy when a traveling group performed their eccletic songs for a night before returning to their journey west.

Nezumi was not unfamiliar with the crowds taverns attracted. He rested his head many nights in such places and exchanged tales and song for food, drink, or coin. Sometimes a book fell on his lap, sometimes an offer of carnal pleasure and relief. The former satisfied him more reliably than the latter, especially once he learned he was not immune to heartbreak. That same revelation made many plays, songs, and stories he had known well difficult to experience without the ache spreading from his crushed chest to his burning throat and eyes. If a soul delievered a tale that stirred Nezumi in that tavern or on a stage, and if it were performed by nothing less than a gifted spirit, he would make a paper-thin, bloodless cut to his hand with his knife to focus on a different pain or he would excuse himself early. Such moments happened rarely since he first was overcome with emotion. They increased since living in No.3 before and after Shion awoke.

The worst incident happened during a parent appreciation event at Ranko's school. His daughter did not trigger the reaction; the girls in her class performed a Xibelani dance that gave Nezumi the strength to collect himself after drowning his superfibre cloth in tears. No, it was the performance before Ranko's that broke him. A boy sang a Scottish poem of a destined prince's escape as his classmate gave an interprative dance envoking defeat and loss of self.

Many years later, after everything he endured will be a sore memory, a teasing lecturer would tell him the brain sends electrical impulses far quicker than one can birth a conscious thought. "We don't have absolute control of ourselves, and there's nothing wrong with that." Then, after another battle of wits ending with them sweaty and spent, he will say the words Nezumi needed to hear ever since that typhoon bound them. "Don't blame yourself for every unexplanable reaction. The body knows how to care for itself better than the logical mind. Sometimes we react emotionally because the body has been numb for too long."

Nezumi did not have that reassurance that night, leaving him to clumsily avoid Ranko's and their companions' questions about his swollen, red face. Dinner was quiet and tense as he thought of some way to turn his daughter's dampened mood around. Praising her dance only went so far, and Ink brought the obvious uncomfortable topic of Shion to add salt to everyone's wounds. The robot, however, unknowingly gave Nezumi a nudge to work through what caused his outburst before putting Ranko to bed.

The four-year-old knew nothing yet of the existential despair behind every piece of heritage and history passed onto her. His life had enough to break a man, but Ranko listened and took in everything Nezumi felt she should know. That Scottish song became yet another sad story mixed with the ugly scars her father carried. How that made Ranko not think less of him was a miracle.

Her breath warmed his neck in the hug she gave. "Grandma, Auntie Ken, and Uncle Rikiga say you're still you, papa. You're not 'gone'."

That wasn't the point, Nezumi wanted to reply, but a pained sigh constricted his lungs and made his head spin. _I've been away for so long that Shion doesn't think I'm real. I broke him, Ran. I nearly killed him._

"I-It's okay to cry, p-papa," Ranko's voice faltered as her tears dampened his neck. "D-Dad said so."

Dad.

She called _him_ "dad".

Nezumi lied. He will never run out of tears to shed for Shion.

He hated how he had no control of his emotions that evening. Even if the appreciation event didn't happen, he would not be able to handle any performance at the only get-together he skipped with valid justification. Maybe he would better contain himself around strangers, but Nezumi always have a moment with Ranko that reminded him why humanity wasn't damned and irredeemable.

Humans are the embodiment of contradictions: adaptable but stubborn, kind but cruel, hopeless but hopeful, fleeting but enduring. The crimes of the many did not always wield the same power as the compassion of the few. One small act could save countless lives. And two humans - a man named rat and a girl named storm - wrapped in a superfibre blanket and among mice of many colors and sizes lived as proof of that certain fact.

* * *

Ikue should have went to bed hours ago, but the Global Census Bureau finally delivered the info packet she had negotiated with them for months. It was too late to use it in the Miyuki Trial; the court had sentenced the Founder to life in prision with all her properties seized. The International Tribunal could have their way with the woman if they wished, and Ikue would happily gift-wrap her as an apology for the inconveniences everyone faced in correcting so many wrongs that had been committed.

She opened the file to verify the information her contact gave and spilled her mug of coffee across the desk in her hotel room upon seeing the ID of a familiar face. Her chair fell to the floor as she searched for her tablet and called Rikiga. He had his ferret and informants in the bureau as well, surely he could deny that the ID was who it claimed to be. That person should be the same as the violent criminal in the video she could not admit into evidence on time for the trial.

After Rikiga calmed Ikue down enough to speak clearly, he reacted much the same as she. 

Ikue began to write yet another request to delay the copyright trial, this time to appeal to the International Tribunal to list anatinus resin as a chemical weapon illegal to manufacture and sell on the market. That meant more months buried in research and living in courtrooms without hope of a break or vacation.

Worse than that, she dreaded having to tell the man who hated her that she had intimate knowledge of what could have been the most traumatic moment in his life. This could have been avoided if Shion had told her about Nezumi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp. That happened. Poor Nezumi. Poor Shion. Poor Ranko. Poor Karan. Poor everyone, really. They all need hugs. TT_TT
> 
> Anywho, how about another list of [not-so-]fun facts about this version of the world?
> 
> 1\. The last animated Disney movie made before the world went to shit was... '101 Dalmations'. Feel free to lament your favorite Disney film's non-existence. *salutes 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' while dodging pitchforks and flamethrowers* And yes, Shion did watch 'Cinderella'. XD
> 
> 2\. Also, you can lament the state of the anime industry in this fic. Almost everything in every genre that international and even Japanese anime fans love just doesn't exist. Even the infamously bad stuff.
> 
> 3\. The eight most commonly spoken languages between the six city-states are Arabic, Chinese, English, Hausa, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Three of them (Spanish, Chinese, and English) are the most spoken languages in the real world, and the other five survived because of the geographical location of where the city-states formed.
> 
> The official languages for the city states are Arabic, English, and Hausa (No.1); Spanish and Portuguese (No.2 and No.4); Arabic, Chinese, English, and Russian (No.3); English (No.5), and Japanese (No.6).


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ranko blocked out much if not all of the background noise surrounding the main lead of this scene. Standing erect and stiff at the heart of the stage, but very much trembling, terrified, and furious in equal measure.

"Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind."

\- Shūsaku Endō, _Silence_

* * *

President Sosuke requested Shion take two additional months of vacation to recuperate. He claimed he made the decision of his own volition, uninfluenced by the probing press and ignorant of his vice president's confidential medical history.

"I will resolve any fallouts and disputes caused by parties too preoccupied by ego and vanity to consider the wellbeing of our city's savior," he had said at the end of the conference call Shion took in a secluded gazebo in Kyakhta Memorial and Teaching Hospital's reflective garden. The easternmost portion of the campus that housed both the garden and the prestigious Zhang-Hu-Yuthok Department for Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan Medicine bordered a young hundred-acre forest of coniferous pines and greenhouses for medicinal herbs. This quiet area became a sanctuary from physical therapy, tests, bloodwork, and the white walls confining him.

Even Shion's tablet liberated him. After the police finished investigating the device, Ikue brought him the work tablet he had left in his hotel room, and his friends and family bought a new communication chip Ranko delivered in the gold-trimmed pages of Tachibana Akemi's _Dokurakugin_. The outside world opened up considerably since then, but Shion remained fixed on the red-haired orphan and the grey-eyed ghost that stalked her. Even when she ceased to speak of it, flames of expectancy raged beneath her skin, giving off a warm glow flies flock to for comfort and guidance.

If he considered an alternative, Shion shelved it immediately. The ghost staring into his room with longing was more real to him than the voice and scent that drove him insane, but the possibility of a reunion here and now was laughable. Thankfully the gazebo had a way of purging Shion's mind of all distractions. Perfect for reading to Ranko and calling the president out on his bullshit.

"Anyone could have rebuilt No.6," Shion reminded with a shrug. "Labeling me a savior is too much."

As Ken once aptly described when watching the man in a press conference, the president shook his head like a dignified wolf emerging from water and drying its majestic fur. "I say it because the average person is too forgetful and self-centered to thank you for your service. The few who do value you are the reason your chip hasn't exploded from excessive buildup of meaningless mail."

"What if someone wishes to send me a get-well message?"

"Grandmother has created a folder to file such sentiments. All media requests are funneled into a void, but you will still be approached after you are released from the hospital. I'll divert their attention as much as I can by answering work-related questions on your behalf."

Stretching his fingers - recently splint-free thumb included - Shion tilted his head. "Thank you, Sosuke."

The president bowed his head in turn. "Think nothing of it, Shion. I'll forward any ecological articles that cross your desk in your absence."

The meeting ended amicably after thirty minutes of debating the need for time off. As much as he appreciated his boss' concern, Shion dreaded having nothing to fill the empty moments between the exploration of the science and mysteries of the recovering earth. Nothing good came from idle hands, and Shion fought that path to depravity by devoting every milisecond to work. It served him well, and everything was just fine.

 

_"Maybe... ...ve... idiot... never... ...ly pers... ...ve with."_

_"My A... ...chick... ...y charge... the ele... thou we..."_

 

A dull vibration stirred the lose threads of images and sounds his brain had entangled. Nearly two weeks of patience revealed nothing of what happened to him between his last dinner with Ikue and being technically dead for thirty seconds in a river. Shion put pressure on his eyes to ease the pain to no avail. He took deep breaths as foul clouds of blood, sweat, and smoke flooded his nostrils.

_He_ lost too much blood to stand without Shion's arm wrapped around _his_ pale, withering body. _He_ begged him to abandon _him_ and save himself. Only someone capable of conceiving such a choice would readily make it -

_Calm down, Shion. Only two hours until the next dosage._  Shion tried to cling to something to keep him from going back there. Nothing remained of that hell but the images and scars that imprinted its likeness on his mind and body.

A cool, thin hand of the friend who had given him some privacy sobered him. "Hope the meetin' wasn't too much for you, boss."

Shion released a sigh and straightened his posture. "It wasn't. I'm just under a little spell."

"Quit puttin' up the brave front." Shaking her head, Ikue took the seat across from Shion at the glass table. "Not much healin' can be done if you're fakin' healthy."

"I'm not faking it. I do feel much better -"

"I'll believe it when I see it." Brushing a dusting of yellow pollen on her mauve blouse, Ikue's expression damped with a sadness that made Shion's intestines shrivel. He wanted her nagging self to return.

"What's wrong?" Shion broke the two minutes of awkward silence.

Ikue sighed, cleared her throat, and took out her tablet. "VC-103221's in the GCD."

Shion's blood froze. _No, that's not possible. He'd never have any legal records._

Even with Ikue holding his hand, he trembled with each wave of memories reviving from a long, deep sleep. Doctor Nikita had to have been alerted of the physicolgical stress she and her team have been monitoring since his one and only episode.

"Ever since you were mistakenly declared dead, those notified were flagged in the system. We wanted to ensure no one inside the bureau conspired against you, and we checked to see if your family's records were altered in any way. I recognized Karan, Ken, and Rikiga, but only one didn't look right. After our contact unlocked the account's privacy settings and showed me the file... I knew it was him."

_I can't wait for ninty-seven minutes with how quickly the meds are wearing off. Shit, I_ knew _they lowered the dosage when I told Doctor Nikita not to!_

"You knew him, Shion. You helped VC-103221 escape No.6 after he escaped from the Correctional Facility and security bureau nearly fourteen years ago."

_Thirteen years, eight months, twenty five days, twenty hours, two minutes, and fourteen seconds ago to be exact._

"Shion, talk to me," swallowing a swollen, slimy frog, Ikue's beg was a strained croak. "Not once did you ever mention or suggest someone called Nezumi was in your life. Why?"

Shion pulled his hand from Ikue's grasp and fixed his attention on a statue of the cowherd and the weaver girl, both marred by the single, curved crack inflicted on the otherwise well-preserved stone.

He put too much faith in an unspoken promise that happened to have never existed in the first place. No one said anything about Nezumi - the memory of him or the recent reoccuring hallucination - and Shion thought he could recover and return to No.6 as if his life was never interrupted in No.3. But whatever he's confronting now will not disappear even as Shion feels he is running on empty. How can he fight something so tenatious when he has little to rely on to defend himself?

Leaning back and glaring at the red fabric shielding his transluscent skin from the sun, Shion said, "How much did they tell you?"

"What?"

"Mom, Ken, and Rikiga. How much did they tell you?"

Ikue groaned and fidgeted in her seat. That movement pulled Shion's eyes back to the woman, not known for being shy about her ignorance or obliviousness to fact and misconception alike. Such moments tended to bring out her unbriddled frustration. "They told me nothin'. Just what you wanted, my guess. And they didn't have to tell me anythin'. The man ain't nothin' like I'd expected from pictures that do exist. For an actor and hardened criminal he's shit at pretendin' to not care about you not recognizin' him."

The concoction of terror, disgust, anger, medications, and longing boiled in his guts so much that Shion clutched himself and broke into a fit of bitter laughter. He wanted to cry, vomit, faint, scream, and die all at once. He needed someone to slap him, to destroy this illusion of reality before he loses himself completely.

All he knew was that Nezumi wasn't in No.3. He wasn't in No.6 either. Nezumi was evanscent. Fleeting and nowhere to be found, drifting in the wind and bending to the will of no one and nothing. Nature doesn't care about promises made between people, let alone the infantile words spit sloppily out of the mouths of teenagers too ignorant of themselves and the world to understand what promises really were or what they meant.

Shion rested his forehead on the table and counted his deep breaths. _I have to get out of here. My work's still not done yet. No.6 is nowhere close to better than before yet. I'm wasting my time here with hope and fairy tales that will do nothing but remind me of how much I... I... Damn it!_ His eyes stung and swelled with tears. _What's wrong with me?_

Ikue's sympathetic voice broke through the blinding haze of Shion's emotions. "The docs said I shouldn'ta pushed the issue, but you need to hear this, boss, because no one gave you a wakeup call. Nezumi came back for you. No doubt he broke your heart when he left and that day's been hauntin' ya since. I can't imagine what that feels like - probably never - but I see enough misery in the both of you to sink ten Great Britains under the ocean. You're both harboring wounds that only you two can heal, and neither of you will get better if you both keep pussy-footin' around each other!"

Suddenly the disgusting potion brewing inside was expelled and a white-hot metal filled the void. Shion sat upright, rubbed his eyes, and brushed back his brown hair calmly. Folding his hands, he turned to the woman, and said, "You want to know the truth that badly, Ikue? It's as you said. You'll never understand who he was and what he did to me."

"Then help me understand! You've been there for me since the beginnin', so why can't I be there for you?"

"You have been here for me, even when you try to hurt me by lying and going behind my back. It's the price we pay for being politicians, but it's still unfortunate."

Face turning a dark color, Ikue's eyes narrowed. "You think me doin' my job and gettin' that Miyuki bitch jailed for torturin' people with goddamned platypus venom is me goin' behind your back?"

"Claiming I have associated with a VC and searching for evidence of such while in the middle of an investigation the International Tribunal watched like vultures would have cost us our careers if you were wrong."

"Bullshit!" spat Ikue, slamming her palm on the table. The golden ring her father gave on her eighteenth birthday hit the glass hard enough to create a scratch on the glass. "It's common knowledge you helpin' a VC escape stripped you of your elite status! And no one gave a shit that you passed out during the pre-trial. And unfortunately no one gives a shit about who that boy was in that video but you and me. I wouldn't have stopped lookin' for him, even if you two had no history. I won't pretend I wasn't curious about that history, but I wanted justice for him the moment I learned Nezumi was the only kid that survived Miyuki's fucked up experiments."

_This is going nowhere._ "Where did you learn his name?"

The question threw Ikue off as Shion expected, but she answered without hesitation. "From Ranko after the man looked at me like I had given him the plague."

Shion chuckled, shaking his head. "Now we're feeding a poor girl's imagination with lies."

"What the hell, Shion?!" Ikue nearly shouted.

He smiled and glanced in the direction of the hospital library, likely where Ranko is with his mother. "She's sharp and kind for a child her age. Even if she weren't, she deserves someone to take care of her."

"Nezumi _is_ takin' care of her, Shion. He's her _father_. Does she look like an unloved orphan with no family and no friends to rely on?"

_Ikue, her father's not real. Her father is not Nezumi. She means well, but someone filled her head about Nezumi to the point she believes he's real._ "I won't argue with you anymore, Ikue," Shion resigned with a sigh. "I'm too tired."

Ikue took several deep breaths. "Preachin' to the choir here. Look, Shion, I love you. Nothin's gonna change that. But I feel like over the years I've been talkin' to a brick wall the whole time. You keep stuff locked in your head, and when somethin' like this happens, no one knows how to help ya."

"I'm sorry for making you worry about me, Ikue," said Shion, patting her hand gently. _I don't know how I feel most days. I do everything I can to not think about it. I know I wouldn't function otherwise._

Ikue returned what he hoped was a smile with a light punch to the shoulder. "Be grateful Rikiga ain't here. He'd throw your ass to the floor and mop it with your hair. Speakin' of, you need a trim, flower boy."

Shion snorted, a ghost of a laugh trying to escape the box he locked away. One day it will burst open, unleashing and avalanche of who knew what had festered like mold in the dark and damp, but today wasn't it. He would never let it happen, even if Nezumi truly were near.

* * *

Her father told the school she was ill the day Shion was released from the hospital. She didn't have to beg; he made that decision it as if no other possibility existed. Silence accompanied them on the local monorail, and no quiet readings from books or soft hums of folksong could dispell the third wheel. Excitement and nervousness filled Ranko, and she knew what her father felt had to be stronger.

Since preparing for _The Tempest_ , much of her father's unreadable expressions and airs returned. The damage may have been done with Ken and Rikiga continuing to poke fun of his behavior when they all came to No.3 for Shion, but her father rediscovered enough inner peace to go through most days without fear of fainting suddenly. However, his feelings, when he revealed them to Ranko, were undiluted and clear. She felt less unsure of what he felt about her and he didn't have to say any words or lines when he made snide commentary over books they read together.

Every so often Ranko and her father had to calm the rodent family burrowed in their clothes and bags. The youngest were understandably chipper, but Seldon displayed bold impatience, climbing out of his master's superfibre cloth and poking the earlobe Ink frequently assulted. Each bite, while painful, would have been worse had they aimed for his left ear with the studded earring Ranko believed her father was always born with. The necklace tickled her skin every time she saw its smaller counterpart.

When the monorail with its the 19th century German aesthetic arrived at the stop across from the hospital, Ranko and her father leapt out in one fluid motion. They walked hand-in-hand, giving each other the occasional squeeze to reassure the child or amuse the parent.

It took far longer than they expected and required waiting and detours, but Ranko would finally see her father and Shion together.

Hospital security recognized them and weaved the father and daughter past a sea of curious citizens and the press surrounding the building. The nosy trespassers bumped into them and attempted to fish any answers from her father or security. Her father had covered her in the superfibre cloth and had made more than one statement that did nothing to mitigate his reputation for being a deadly force to be wreckoned with. One particular reporter, who looked more like a supermodel pretending to be a journalist, gushed over Ranko and tried to touch her hair, only to find herself on the ground with a twisted ankle and three grape-eyed mice bearing teeth two milimeters from her jugular and vital pressure points.

Upon entering the reserved waiting room, Karan ignored the coffee Uncle Rikiga offered her and pulled Ranko and her father into a hug. Chipper, puppy-like laughter emitted from her uncle's communication chip, and he threw words at Aunt Ken that her father forbade her from ever using in her life. Ikue waited as well, but stood by a vending machine a few steps away from the chairs everyone else used as time passed.

"Shion's housing has been paid for, and I've slipped an extra allowance for emergencies," Karan assured her father of a concern he didn't hint he possessed.

"Maybe it's for the best since he'll be in the same building without having to live with them," said Ken, sounding more calm and cool to make up for their ugly snarl. "Just promise me you two will finally make it official after this summer fling, rat."

Her father could not dignify that comment with any conscious or subconscious reaction.

Ikue flinched as if someone threw slime in her face. "Ken..."

"C'mon, apple girl, it's Mama Karan's job to tell me off for finally dragging her son out of the -"

"I only wish for Shion to be happy," Karan interrupted, folding her hands on her lap. At her chair was a bag of fresh baked goods she prepared hours ago. "And he hasn't been happy in a long time." She turned to her father and spoke quicker than he could conceive a protest. "I share as much if not more blame for failing him. Having accepted my culpability in Shion's grieving heart and ailing mind, what matters now is how I can attend to his needs for the next two months and beyond."

Sighing, Ikue folded her arms. "How can that work if he thinks Nezumi's not real?"

Ranko wondered that herself every time she visited Shion. He treated her no differently than before his "panic attack", but she chose to never mention her father around him again. If he asked about her day, she focused on books, schoolwork, and the mice. The joy she felt during camping trips in the wastelands, visits to museums, and the Romanov Memorial Tower overlooking No.3 and the swamplands and abandoned selos surrounding the city-state remained unspoken. They were beautiful flowers wilting from neglect.

She asked her father if Shion would never believe him to be real, but his fatalistic answer reminded her that the darkness that claimed him had not yet been vanquished forever: "We move forward, doing everything we can to the best of our ability, and see where that takes us."

Their nervous discussions ended when the doctors brought out a brown-haired, brown-eyed young man wearing a pressed shirt, black tie, and sneakers. He gave each of his standing visitors a lingering look of recognition and warmth, starting from his mother to Ikue, Rikiga, and the holograms of Ken and Sion. When he reached Ranko, a faint smile cracked the calm mask he wore, and she could hear him reading what snipets of _Macbeth_ he had recalled for her in the dusty confines of the bunker far, far away:

"A good and virtuous nature may recoil in an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon. That, which you are, my thoughts cannot impose. Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace. Yet grace must still look so."

All kindness drained away when her father came into Shion's gaze. The impossible man's hands were cold and clammy, but Ranko gave him the hardest squeeze she could muster, even if it was nothing more than a pinch. He sighed a weighty, pained sigh the old woman would murder him over. Ranko could hear his heart break with every second of silence and stillness between the two boys who had become men. Sad, lonely men who dreamed of being reunited so much sooner and under so much easier circumstances.

After standard conversation between the visitors and the hospital staff, Shion moved first, getting up from the wheelchair and slowly dragging his feet forward. Ranko's father mirrored him. They drew closer in a hypnotic dance of apprehension, dread, and tension that strung everyone along on a long ride with no known destination in sight.

Such synchronicity existed in the romances her father had mocked. He only ever gave her an abridged summary of _Romeo and Juliet_ with its originally intended satire front and center. It's impossible for two people to be so in tune with each other's thoughts and movements after only a brief encounter, Ken had loosely recalled a rebuttal her father made after Shion had lived with him for only two months. He admitted it directly to Ranko when he tried to untangle the confusing, conflicted feelings he fought as a teenager, adorable and miniscule next to what he endured as an adult.

Six steps apart, they stilled. Her father appeared slightly taller than Shion if one examined with a fine-tooth comb. While her father's face was obscured from where Ranko stood, she could see Shion's expressions clearly, shifting and morphing to find the best way to manifest and make his true feelings about this moment known. It was not unlike her father struggling to begin revealing the story of his imperfect life to his impressionable child.

They stood silent for five minutes, waiting for someone to break the tense silence strangling the life out of the room.

"Shion."

Shion responded with a fist, and her father tumbled to the floor.

_Papa!!_

Karan pulled Ranko back despite having the wind knocked out of her lungs too. Ikue and the doctors scrambled to separate the men, but Ken and Rikiga convinced them to not interfere. Even if a violent encounter was "understandable", all but the youngest physician elected to patch any injuries on the tab of No.6's president.

Ranko blocked out much if not all of the background noise surrounding the main lead of this scene. Standing erect and stiff at the heart of the stage, but very much trembling, terrified, and furious in equal measure.

"'Shion'. So that's it. No "Hello'. No 'How've you been?'. No 'Looks like I'm still taller than you'. Not even 'You may be the second to a not-dictator, but you're still an airhead' or 'Did the little lamb manage to get laid while the big bad wolf was away?'. Don't tell me you lost your way with words because we both know that's bullshit. By now you would have made at least four snarky comments about the weather or how expensive the healthcare must be for a pampered elite like me. Or maybe I should just be grateful you managed to recognize me out of the 400 million people on this planet."

"What...?" Even when sitting upright, her father sounded so gutted and hollow. "Shion, you..."

"Shut up." Shion's voice cracked like a whip to raw flesh. "I haven't even started yet.

"How was your adventure, by the way? Did you see the remains of the great monuments from your old books? Have you scowered every corner of land before crossing the sea? Is life underwater more peaceful than life on land or more tempermental than storms? Were the other cities like No.6? Does life exist beyond the walls and domes we built after we supposedly destroyed the land with wars and bombs and exploiting natural resources? Did you find the meaning of life? How long did you stay in one place? Did you ever get sick or injured with no one to help you? How many people did you kill in the name of survival? How many souls did you spirit away or heal with your voice? How many bodies kept you warm after seducing them with one of your many evocative performances?"

"Whoa, Shion! Not a topic to bring up in front of your nephew and a four-year old -"

"Let. Me. Finish. Ken. Unlike you or Rikiga or mom, I never got a chance to choose how I wanted to live my life. No one else wanted to stand up from the ruins of the city and start over again. No one else knew the true color of No.6's blood. No one else lived inside the city in its richest and poorest districts, witnessed the holocausts that were the Correctional Facility and the Manhunt, survived the toxins from a parasitic wasp's reproduction cycle, watched his best friend get her brain shoved into a test tube, and talked down a vengeful god from massacring a city of 37.2 million. Those who did have the qualifications and skills to lead that I lacked were too obsessed with money, power, and prestige to take seriously any and all of the at-risk lives due to poor living conditions, damaged infrustructure, and civic unrest in every district! And even if others could have taken my place, everyone - everyone EVERYWHERE - expected me to play some key role in reviving the city. Worse, I met countless peers buckle under the weighty gaze of the generations before us. They prayed and hoped we would build a better and peaceful world after the old government failed to achieve utopia while my colleagues leapt off the top of the Moondrop or joined their family members after killing them in a bloodhaze!"

Constant teardrops pelted the crown of Ranko's head. Ikue maintained her distance, Rikiga's knees gave up on him a long time ago, and the doctors allowed the man's stream of consciousness to continue in spite of the paws and cries of living and robot critters failing to stand between the aster and the rat.

Her father rose to his feet. "Shion, I -"

"Don't interrupt me!" Shion's scream shook the tectonic plate where the city resided. "I had no right to stop you back then, and you have no fucking right to stop me now!"

Seeing her father cave in to an unreasonable demand compelled Ranko to punch Shion in turn. She may have done so without the man's mother channeling what little spirit she could muster to shield Ranko from her son's wrath. Without that restraint, Ranko would have never seen how rapidly Shion's wrath devolved into something distressingly familiar.

"For nine years, two months, twenty-one days, one hour, seventeen minutes, and forty seconds I've been waiting. I'm counting because, after waking up every day to perform the exact role you told me to play, there was nothing left in me to do. Not a single one of those days passed when I didn't wonder where you were, if you were alive, if you found what you were looking for, if you found someplace to call home since No.6 was never going to be it. I had dreams and nightmares about you every night for months! Yes, even when I was in a fucking coma they never stopped! And then you just pop out of a jack-in-the-box the one random day I wake up thousands of kilometers from home in another city-state? And everyone - even my mom - begins to legitimize the delusion my amneasiac brain concocted when you are the absolutely last thing in this world I need right now?! I don't need you mocking me, calling me a naive little boy too weak and pathetic and stupid and worthless to be breathing the same air as a protozoa not even 0.2% of 1% of humans know exist!

"Besides..." By now Shion's face was swollen, drenched, and hideously red. His tears have long revealed the faint lines of his scar and stained his shirt with runaway concealer. "Besides, we're only strangers... Wh-Why should I even care... I was just a scholar o-obsessed with a n-new planet or exotic animal... Y-You were just... just an unusual, strange th-thing I never s-saw before... a human o-only full o-of information to covert into n-numeric values... I was never 'drawn to you', and I never lo-"

Nezumi threw himself at Shion, superfibre cloth muting the last words of his blasphemy. The patient proceeded to writhe, hit his attacker, and scream more curses until a long, broken wail reached the farthest corners of the world. Shion's body gave out in Nezumi's arms, and, too weak to carry the weight of everything, they fell to the floor.

Ranko recalled nothing else that day but fighting futilly against a thousand arms and calling out to her fathers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, FINALLY, Shion and Nezumi properly and formally reunite.
> 
> ...It's still too soon to say "And they all lived happily ever after", but they are one step closer to it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What was the point in returning to Shion, risking himself and Ranko's safety, when they were further apart than ever? If this continued for another week, Nezumi would have to confront him and end this dance of avoidance once and for all before either man destroys the other, himself, or both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, December. The month of a hundred holidays. The month of my birth. The month when I subjected myself to No.6 last year. The month this fic was conceived.
> 
> This isn't the most exciting update after a month of silence, but work got super crazy busy, leaving me no time to write. :(
> 
> Anywho, if there is a plus, no one cries in this chapter! XD
> 
> Happy holidays to anyone and everyone who celebrates a holiday in the month of December!

"If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy."

\- Jane Austen, _Sense and Sensibility_

* * *

A week passed since his release, and Shion only saw the consequences of Nezumi's actions. He dropped Ranko off at school every morning; Shion picked her up in the afternoons to explore the city, help with homework, or read books at home; and Ranko returned to her home at Snow's insistence. Having the girl's company helped the many hours of nothing pass. Shion tried to keep busy by peer-editing a research paper from a university colleague living in No.2 or studying the plant and organism samples from No.5's Sydney Ecology and Zoology Institute. As his mother, Rikiga, and Ikue returned to their jobs and lives, not without checking up on him daily, Ranko helped Shion feel somewhat grounded.

Despite her presence and the attempts at employment between fulfilling basic biological functions, the hours of idleness made Nezumi's absence all the more suffocating. The hallucination blew open the window he had closed in the haze of medications and calls of duty. Introducing any real or imagined possibility of Nezumi's return terrified Shion. So much time had passed with no attempt at reconnecting that something in Nezumi had inevitably changed. Even if the man at the hospital was as real as the heartbeat that embraced him, being on the receiving end of a humiliating outburst would only drive Nezumi further away than ever. Their last interaction was him, detached and muted, dropping Shion off at the apartment accommodations President Sosuke's staff had made.

While he had not interacted with or seen Nezumi since he brought Shion to this apartment with an air of cold detachment, for better and for worse, being with Ranko gave Shion a glimpse of who the man had become.

He gave her more autonomy and independence than the average child - especially for one of the estimated 82,000 known people born with red hair. This was only slightly offset with the mice informing her father of her location at all times. None of the typical child-unfriendly topics were off limits; he had exposed her to literature with bleak, brutal philosophies with the same ease as a colorful, saccharine fairy tale with a happy ending.

Her favorite genre was fantasy because she marveled at the magic and worlds that bend the rules of how things ought to be. As one who enjoyed learning, Ranko's idea of fun included asking a hundred questions about each item in a museum exhibit or watching Shion perform tests on the samples he obtained from the ghost _selos_ and swamps surrounding No.3. She had asked if Shion believed in miracles with not a trace of hesitation or embarrassment. Just as many things hinting at her as being Nezumi's daughter proved that he couldn't possibly be her father. She may share his affinity for music, his scowls of disgust, his penchant for dramatic exaggerations, and his reverence in turning pages of a book, but Ranko was too optimistic and cheerful to have the cynical, mercurial, sarcastic Nezumi as her parent, even if he had matured.

What sowed the most doubts of about the man not being real was Ranko's sudden swells of panic when Shion would take her back home.

"Can I stay with you, Shion?" Ranko had begged one evening with teary eyes. She clung to his leg so tightly that nothing could pry her off him. Seldon and Snow were torn between talking sense into her and Mocha, hiding behind a puff-chested Hakugin on Shion's shoulder. "We can make cocoa and hallulla, and you can read me a story! Please?!"

Her unashamed pleas made it difficult to say no, and he wanted to try the bread he had never heard of before the girl sang its praises, but Ranko had a biannual checkup first thing in the morning. If she stayed with him, they would be up all night, forget to sleep, and miss the appointment entirely. Any reasonable parent would forbid such a sleepover. Ranko was crestfallen when he finally convinced her after an hour of protesting. Cleaning herself up after her crying fit, she wished him goodnight and closed the door like a proper young lady.

All of that was for naught when the girl banged on his door at 23:45, wearing pale yellow pajamas and presenting an unfamiliar light-brown mouse with a capsule in its mouth. The hallulla would be ready by morning, and the cocoa eased the girl into a blissful sleepiness marred by hopeless fights against heavy, exhausted eyelids. After he read _The Little Mermaid_ to Ranko and six of his and her mice to sleep in his king-sized bed, Shion opened the capsule the new mouse left by his evening medications. It climbed his arm and nudged Shion's neck with its cold nose. His breath hitched upon seeing the familiar handwriting.

_Dr. Long at 08:30. Lián Zhōnghuá District, 18 Xiānggǎng Road. Formosa's Tea Shop next door; princess loves maccha milk tea. Beware the Suns. - Nezumi_

His fingers traced the fine lines of kana and kanji made by those that would hold a pen, point to a map, turn a page, or trace the edges of a snake with the hypnotic elegance of a divine being. Was this the first and only draft of this note? Had there been others, marred by misspellings or intents the man deemed unworthy of Shion's knowledge? Why did Nezumi write a letter instead of meeting Shion in person to allow Ranko to spend more time with him? Did he begrudge Shion for this distance between them?

_Stop overthinking this. It's only a letter._ Shion threw the paper in the compact compost and swallowed his pills, sobering his racing thoughts.

The children's clinic was nestled in a young district that sprouted from the remains of a large Russian oil-refining complex. This northern "town" had been engulfed in a great culture war among the ethnic Chinese over the true flag of their fallen nation since the first wave of refugees slummed in the abandoned urban pocket months before the No.3's founding in 1989. Shion wondered why they had to go to this clinic near one of the last active battlefields of The Cold War. The simplest answer would be that Nezumi had not severed himself from hotbeds of criminal company. Even if he did turn over one of many new leaves, Shion felt more unease around people who he had more in common with phenotypically and historically compared to the descendants of Indo-Europeans. Bad blood lingered in every _guózì_ with a kanji cousin on a poster advocating the dissolution if not desctruction of No.6. A security officer had tailed Shion and Ranko for two blocks until he spotted a boy Sion's age plucking a counterfeit designer wallet from an unattended kiosk. He did not know what could have been worse: being suspected because he's Japanese or being presumed a trafficker because of Ranko's red hair.

A diverse staff worked at the clinic, and materials in the eight major languages filled the waiting room. Few people were here at this hour, but the posters, magazines, and holographic screens overwhelmed Shion's senses more than a convention. Whimpering, Ranko pulled her superfibre headscarf over her shimmering, saucer-large eyes. They did not wait a minute to be called, and the halls of the facility had more soothing, bland colors to calm the most sensitive child.

A young nurse intern did a few typical measurements of blood pressure, height, and weight before Dr. Long entered. He opened a sealed tin of cheese and bread for the mice to enjoy while he prepared the needles with comprehensive booster vaccines for smallpox, cholera, HIV, and tuberculosis mandated by the World Health Organization in 1998. Shion recognized the packaging of the TB and HIV shots in particular from a chapter on the Southern Purge in Safu's epidemiology textbook prior to his caste demotion. The exact number of deaths in Africa, South America, and Asia would never be known, but most scientists generally agreed that one or multiple treatable and fatal diseases claimed one billion with the collapse of civilization and the depletion of medical supplies.

Dr. Long's beady eyes darted from Shion to his ID bracelet displaying the patient's records. "You are... acquainted with Ariel, Vice President Shion?" he inquired in English.

"Just Shion, please," he said for what had to have been the trillionth time. The little robot mouse from last night poking its head out of Shion's breast pocket provided translation for this exchange. "And yes. Ranko's Global Census file has a permissive waiver granting me limited access to her medical history for the purposes of this appointment."

"I saw that, but that's not why I brought it up." He gave the girl a stuffed panda bear to hold as he prepared her arm for the thick needle of the HIV vaccine. Ranko squeezed Shion's arm to the point of making it fall asleep. "Discretion is her greatest asset, and the Vice President of No.6 is anything but discrete."

Shion showed a polite half-smile. A feeling not unlike static hit the roots of his hair, around his eyes, and in his scar. "Then comparatively speaking knowledge is my asset. When one cannot hide who they are, they learn all they can about the other pieces on the board and how they move."

The doctor sniffed in dismissal. No matter his opinion of Shion, his hands were steady and gentle with his patient, shielded by mice everywhere but her arm. The sight surprised Shion; fathers being overprotective of their daughters was not unheard of, but if Nezumi of all people was no exception, Shion's entire life may as well have been a lie.

"If that is the case, then you are aware of her 'business associates'?"

_Not that I'm not curious who helped_ him _register Ranko, but no._ "Ariel has not shied away from the topic," he lied.

"Yet you come here without any regard to your reputation. I'm not sure if that makes you brave or foolish."

Feeling weary of the conversation, Shion's fingers combed Ranko's scalp and said firmly, "I came here for Ranko, who needs the quality medical care Ariel had never received as a child. Nothing about that ought to be politicized, especially by an esteemed Chinese-American pediatrician with concerning knowledge about the underground in front of the second to the leader of the People's Committee of Baraen. Keeping our lips sealed is mutually in our best interests, wouldn't you agree?"

Dr. Long dropped the topic for good, reserving his words solely to soothe Ranko and to share relevant information about her health.

Shion's tablet received documentation about the side effects of each vaccine and general lifestyle recommendations for reducing the risk for renal medullary carcinoma. The small portion of Rano's file he could access was as detailed and up-to-date as any child in a traditional, stable household, if not more. Her genetic profile listed her risk factors and tracked unique aspects of her biochemistry that were considered abnormal on average but were regarded as healthy and sound for her body. Shion noted the muddy data suggesting the likelihood of her developing a tall, thin skeletal structure upon adulthood was 48.2%. Had her biological parents have been identified and examined, the child of a nomad would have the same amount of careful documentation as a billionaire's child.

_Nezumi... you must really love her._ Shion choked on the sweeping melancholy swelling in his chest.

Once the appointment ended with no charge and a panda-patterned gauze, Shion bought Ranko a lemon pastry with her favorite milk tea. Any memories of discomfort and pain disappeared with every cheery bite and sip. She ate quickly but not sloppily; when Shion pointed to a crumb on her cheek, Ranko used a napkin and gave the crumb to Mocha. The girl offered half of the treat until Shion could no longer argue over how someone should use a gift once given. _A princess indeed. I wonder how many arguments has she won... or her father let her win._

Shion noticed the girl frowning after finishing her milk tea. "Do you want another?"

Ranko shook her head and picked at her gauze. "Are all the pandas gone?"

A strange topic, but Shion did not mind indulging. "No, there are still some alive. No.2 has twenty in their zoology facilities, and we're trying to grow them in No.3 and No.5 to bring the population back to a sustainable number. We'll save them if we can."

"Oh... is it working?"

"I hope so. Last year six genetically modified pandas were born healthy. It'll take about a decade to know if we are making progress."

Ranko nodded. When Seldon climbed out of her hair and rested against her neck, she giggled. For a split second her eyes glimmered with unguarded surprise like _his_ used to. "Shion, do pandas hug?"

Shion blinked back surprise. "I-I don't think so... Hugging seems to only be a human way to express affection. Why? Do you like pandas, Ranko?"

She frowned slightly. "Papa calls me a 'koala joey' when I hug him. I asked him if bears hug, but he didn't know."

"From what I understand, animals show affection differently than humans. Some cuddle, some mark their scent, and others bathe or groom." He didn't realize his own behavior until after he picked a leaf stuck in Ranko's puffy ponytail. "Koalas aren't bears, but joeys cling to their mothers just as bear cubs and human children do."

That answer seemed to satisfy Ranko, given the toothy smile she flashed. "Papa is a singer, an actor, a joker, a rat, a bear, a mama, and a papa. He can do anything!"

It was a clear day, but Ranko's words made the sunlight so much brighter and warmer. Shion had forgotten the last time he noticed such earnest unquestioning love burning within someone. Something came so close to it a long time ago inside him, and seeing its familiar in Ranko made the sleeping force rouse just enough to flinch.

"Yeah. He sure can."

Shion leaned back in his chair and stared at the rich, deep blue sky. He tried to envision the Nezumi he knew as a man wearing every mask Ranko mentioned. When he blinked, the fragmented image of Nezumi, tips of black hair tickling the gonial angles of his jaw and sharpened lines of graceful aging - appeared above him. He made an involuntary chuckle; of everything about the person who so fundamentally sculpted his world, Shion's mind had always failed to capture the breadth of his spirit. _The wind can never be contained_ , he reminded himself.

They sat in comfortable silence for ten minutes, soaking in the summer sun's rays until it was time for Ranko to go to school in the riverside old-town district of Europagrad. Mocha, Nelo, and Ichigo made themselves comfortable in her bag; Seldon stayed with Shion and growled when the man insisted he return the brown mouse back to Ranko.

"I have Snow, remember?" she called out on her way through the guarded front doors. "Papa made her for you! She talks to Snow and Ink so you don't get lost!"

_Cheep!_ The mouse glared at Shion. "She" and Seldon carried their anger for the rest of the day. But it wasn't anger; the potency allowed it to fester far longer than it should if the cause was a transgression against gift giving. As he tried to occupy his time around the city and in his apartment, he would take a moment to wonder what made the mice that embraced him upon awakening turn against him.

A likely answer arrived two hours later in the form of a voice mail from Ikue. Shion pulled himself out of a local historical fiction author's book signing at the Omsk Memorial Library and into a bathroom. He felt the onset of a panic attack coming. He was at his daily limit for his anti-anxiety medication, leaving Shion to use the meditative techniques Dr Nikita's colleague taught him when he frequented the gardens. They worked, but Shion had to sit on the dingy floor of the public bathroom with his knees to his chest to dissipate the tingling cotton balls that stuffed his limbs.

When he recovered from the five-minute episode, Shion swallowed his pride and told his friend he would try to help her before the International Tribunal's court proceedings begin in late July.

* * *

"I'm leaving for No.3 in the morning. Sosuke says I need to use my paid vacation days before he donates them to the interns. Depending on how I feel, I may stay an extra day. According to Beth, the swamplands between the Altai Mountains and the city have the early signs of incredible biodiversity that need to be seen to believe. It'd be something to check out, but..."

The bright light of the camera turned Shion's face pitch white in contrast with the darkness in his bedroom. When he sighed, something shifted in his tone and demeanor like a curtain revealing what was hidden from sight all along. "This is stupid. No one's ever going to see these videos. Just..." Another sigh. He covers his face with his hands, fingers combing the dark hair he dyed. "Just accept he's not coming back. Accept you'll never remember how beautiful his voice or the color of his eyes were. Nezumi moved on a long time ago, and so should you."

Nezumi's smooth fingertips reached for the image of the face of whose despair he'd purify with a kiss if he could. They went through the screen, leaving him emptier. "You're such a terrible liar."

When sleep failed him and it was too dark and hot to read a book by candlelight, he would replay excerpts of Shion's diary. In his grief over Shion's misreported death, he had missed so many warnings of the man's fragile emotional and mental state. Even now he knew he was very close to misinterpreting every backpedal, every nervous tick, every word not said. But he could never know what Shion truly felt and truly feels now if they continued to avoid each other. He did not push aside that damned memory of Shion and Ikue together and return just to have him and Shion be further separated by what was perceived to be real or imaginary.

They barely spoke a word when Nezumi led Shion to his apartment two floors above him and Ranko. Rikiga had helped him pay for the wooden furniture and stone countertops to give the place a natural, relaxing atmosphere while Karan and Ikue had shipped Shion's academic resources along with new clothes appropriate for a twenty-five-year-old man on a summer vacation. The flicker of shock on Shion's face and his comment about never having had enough time to decorate his apartment stuck in Nezumi's mind. He remembered shrugging at the observation, giving the man the keys, and leaving Shion to his own devices as he had asked. There would be time later to talk about everything; Shion just needed a few days to find a routine before having Nezumi cause further disruptions and amplify the anxiety he had struggled with for years.

Two days of living with that decision made Nezumi prefer being on the other side of the world. Every day after was increasingly more agonizing and ridiculous.

Ranko's stories about how she and Shion spent the day or afternoon together gave Nezumi stomachaches. The dreams returned - good and bad, although he found it difficult to distinguish between the two when the "bad ones" showed Shion drowning and the "good ones" reminded Nezumi why he had sex with strangers. He ignored every intrusive inquiry of their "progress", and he placed Ikue and her obnoxious legal pleas on silent.

The theater became less of a refuge when a word or reading of a line from an inexperienced actor reminded Nezumi of Shion's many valient and failed attempts. Ranko's pleas quieted into piercing silence before asking if she could have a sleepover at Shion's despite having a doctor's appointment in the morning. Rumors of an increased interest in Shion in the underground reached Nezumi's ears as if they expected him to prove if there was a connection between them due to him accompanying Ranko in public. Neither the authorities nor Rikiga found a breakthrough in the investigation of what happened to Shion around midnight on March 8.

What was the point in returning to Shion, risking himself and Ranko's safety, when they were further apart than ever? If Shion would not act before the end of the week, Nezumi would have to confront him and end this dance of avoidance once and for all before either man destroys the other, himself, or both.

* * *

The Trans-Siberian Academy of Performing Arts was second to No.5's Sydney Opera House in prestige, but its criminal connections to the underground were an open secret. It may not have been the primary hub for human trafficking, but most of the politicians with ties to the underground market funneled much of their funds to shareholders in the institution who managed the network in No.3. Shion knew because Rikiga had implored him twenty-seven times that morning to "stay the fuck away from Eve's cesspool of employment".

Unbeknownst to his unofficial father-figure, Shion took precautions that made the average person not suspect him upon initial examination.

_Yikes!_ Shion's jaw dropped when he saw his pasty-skinned self in the full-body mirror hanging by his bedroom door. He momentarily returned to the bunker, shredding his clothes and bandages to reveal not a single strand of brown hair remaining and a parasite having invaded his flesh and wrapped around him from face to foot. _How could anyone find this attractive?_

Ignoring his own question, Shion slipped on a short-sleeved green hoodie from a historically Italian designer brand and high-top sneakers to match his khaki shorts. He had noticed the striking and colorful fashion most of his generation had adopted in No.3 and realized disheveled white hair and striking purple eyes didn't raise eyebrows next to the more extreme choices made by the hundreds of subcultures within the population. Most would assume him to be an _agan_ based on looks alone, and he'd welcome the ethnic slur thrown at him at every corner between the apartment and the theater.

Security guards, dressed in marengo uniforms and carrying thin, ceremonial swords at their sides, stood two meters apart at each of the four sets of red double doors. He bowed his head to the men and women and moved around the block to the north where an alley led to the backstage entrance. Even there, a lone guard stood at the door. Sharp, almond eyes flickered to acknowledge Shion approaching him, but the blond-born guard expressed less emotion than a statue.

Shion maintained five steps of distance when he spoke in English, "Is the theater closed?"

"The actors have rehearsal," the stoic guard recited his script in English, followed by Russian and Chinese. "Unauthorized individuals are trespassers who will be escorted from the premises."

"Article 46, Section 7, Paragraph 3a of the Public Property Rights Chapter of the Khehan Oblast Federalist Constitution." It rolled off Shion's tongue with ease in English due to hours of practice the night before.

"Memorization and recitation of No.3's laws to an acting consultant of the Enforcement Bureau does not make you immune to the consequences of the law, sir."

Shion laughed nervously and shrugged. "Is that so..." Then he slipped into his native language, losing none of his embarrassment. "For all the law I studied in university, Ikue says I sometimes lack common sense."

The guard's eyes jumped back to Shion. They may have widened by a millimeter, but that was enough to telegraph that the man was surprised. "Common sense has no meaning if one doesn't possess the knowledge to overcompensate for such a prevalent societal deficiency."

"I agree," said Shion. _Sounds like what Ikue would say in less colorful language._

With that odd common ground established, the guard's eyes flicked to his left towards the direction of the doorknob. Shion nodded and proceeded into the back of the theater. He felt Mary fidget in his hoodie until her nose poked out from between the collar and his neck, and he gave her a gentle stroke for her more accurate than his ID chit's translator. He also owed Ikue two drinks for covering him.

The wooden and stone jungle of the world behind the curtain was difficult to navigate with dozens of set designers, actors, understudies, and stagehands following the will of the production. Everyone weaved through the humid heat, incessant chatter, and fumes of paint and props to bring an ambitious performance of _The Tempest_ to tempt fresh blood to replace and outshine the veterans and the successful bound for No.5 in the autumn season. In the madness no one questioned Shion's existence, allowing him to explore any nook and cranny of the theater he wished, save for the stage.

In the throng of people and on the stage, he could not find Nezumi. Rather than give up, he turned back to the dressing rooms to find a way into the auditorium. Once he secured a safe place to sit, he could find Nezumi on the stage.

"Where you think you going, Xiāole?" A cold hand with spidery fingers grabbed Shion by the elbow. He fell into the person about his size, who turned him around and flashed a sultry smile that disappeared once she had a close view of his face. "Oh, fuck me sideways!" The woman - a decade too old to be using such language - let go of Shion immediately. "Sorry, doll. My son wears a hoodie like you and my eyesight's going bad."

" _Biézháojí_ ," slightly tripping over the pronunciation and tone, Shion tried to calm her in Chinese. "I'm looking for someone too. The man playing Ariel."

The woman rose an inquisitive eyebrow. "Oh, the silver siren who's far above anyone's league? What for?"

Shion shivered, realizing he played his hopeless admirer card too soon. At that moment, Mary chirped and made herself known to the woman. She may have appeared to be homely enough to be terrified of rodents, but her crude language and river spirit tattoo on the makeup artist's left arm gave her a strong enough spine for such a reveal.

"Haha, one of his companions got loose didn't they?" The woman shook her head and motioned her hands towards the direction of the stage. "Johan finished prettying him up a minute ago, and he should be practicing now. Better to wait in his dressing room until he's done so you're not bumping into anyone.

"Or -" She pointed further to the right where a pillar with notes of good wishes and luck adorned from the lowest floor to every ramp above until it reached the ceiling. "-you can steal a seat from the House. Danila and Kiki finished cleaning there, so no one'll be back there until the evening. Just keep your hood over that white flare, doll, so he doesn't catch you," she added with a nudge and wink.

He thanked her with a bow and took her suggestion. With how easily Shion got into the theater, he expected trouble to catch up with him at some point and time. But even if he did, he had a perfect view of the behind the scenes of a real, legitimate theater production.

Much of the magic was lost with each mistake, correction, and overcorrection. Some actors were at their best without a costume, and others held back to save their energy for opening night. The Eve Community Theater had a culture of internal politics and drama that was no different from the Trans-Siberian Academy; however, the pressures of excellence amplified the minor mistakes to life-threatening disasters and the strict commands to God-given absolutes. Shion felt bad for the girl playing Miranda who was mousy and meek when not stepping into a role with a strong voice that carried in the auditorium that could seat one thousand. The man playing Caliban stood up for her when the stage director scolded her for sounding "too impassioned for the scene", an irony that made Shion chuckle.

"Fine! We're going nowhere with all of this extra training and man hours we're paying out of our own checkbooks!" The director dismissed Caliban when the argument ended in his victory. "Let's go back to the beginning of Act 4, Scene 1 at 'Fairly spoke' before I consider firing every damn one of you!"

Three men entered the stage, one of each playing Prospero, Ferdinand, and Ariel in that order. When the only familiar-looking actor appeared, Shion felt his heart rise to his throat and beat with the intensity of a drummer leading an army of thousands into battle. Grateful for the darkness in the auditorium, he stared transfixed upon the black-haired spirit, breathtaking with every movement, even in a simplified prototype of a costume not quite befitting the character yet. Shion had to bite his lips to not let a gasp echo across the void between him and the stage. His heart was already too loud for his ears, too small for his body to contain.

"At least Vlad and the Japanese rat know how to carry a scene like it's worth a damn," grumbled the director, slapping Prospero's shoulder with the script. "Show the fleas how it's done, gentlemen."

The man named Vlad did just that, holding a stick placement for the staff like a king and calling for his faithful servant as if he were an old friend. Not halfway through his delivering another task did Shion sense a new interpretation of the interactions between Prospero and Ariel. Be it because of the directing or the synergy between the actors, Shion did not know, and, from how his abdominal muscles cramped, he didn't particularly care for it.

But when Ariel spoke and glided towards Prospero with unwavering certainty, Shion forgot everything. Nothing existed but that voice that brought memories of nearly two hundred nights being whisked away in impossible worlds from a musty bunker. "Before you can say 'come' and 'go', and breathe twice and cry 'so, so'. Each one, tripping on his toe, will be here with mop and mow."

Then he suddenly stepped back, skittish from an internal realization. Ariel's gaze fell upon the young lovers in the background and in the complete opposite direction. "Do you... do you love me, master? ...no?"

Shion - no... Prospero. It was Prospero who captured Ariel's hand before he could disappear into a puff of smoke. "Dearly, my delicate Ariel." The tender affirmation was a mere whisper. "Do not approach til thou dost hear me call."

Lips parted in worry, Ariel nodded. His hand was free from Prospero's grasp, but not his eyes, locked and fixed upon his master's until he slipped behind the curtain.

The first time he had seen Nezumi on stage as the fair, lovesick Ophelia, Shion was enthralled by his ability to remove every trace of his personality to perform. No wonder Rikiga's expectations shattered the moment the real person behind the stage name revealed himself. As Eve, Nezumi tapped into a vital vein that once ruptured, released a tsunami of anguished confessions, sorrowful wails, blind rage, and soulful elation. Every emotion ever captured in text poured from every facet of his form in an uncanny familiarity and fluency. He could be anyone at will without hesitation, a chameleon in a rat's skin. The wind molded into the shape of a human.

He could ignore the ugly bile simmering in his gut simply because it was Ariel speaking with a fond longing for Prospero, it was Ariel faithfully executing his master's every command, it was Ariel performing his first act of freedom with a kiss. Ariel did everything the actor playing him had never and will never do for anyone. The tragedy of it all was beautiful, to see Nezumi truly be human for a few hours on an artificial construction, to be seen from afar, never to be held or touched. He never needed anyone. He never wanted anyone, let alone wanting or needing to be loved.

_"Shion... what are you doing?!_

The dull pain in an inner crevice of his brain returned. Unless he wanted his liver to fail in five years, he had only one ibuprophen left for the day. Shion rubbed his eyes, erasing the projection of himself on the stage that claimed Nezumi seconds before dissolving into the darkness he called home. That helped to ease the ache.

When the director succeeded in shaming the rest of the cast for being vastly inferior to the two leads, Nezumi and Vlad had left the stage. The spell wore off, and Shion remembered Ikue's favor, the reason why he came to the theater in the first place. After being whisked away for what could have been hours, his body remained limp and numb from the effects of being so high.

_Cheep!_

Mary swatted his cheek, sobering him. Hamlet used to do the same when Shion discovered a new book from the mountains of half-finished tomes that needed to be shelved. He smiled at the robot and wondered how he managed to come this far without someone or something pulling him out of the clouds. _To be honest, I haven't. Not since..._ He sighed. _It doesn't matter._

"Let's go, Mary," he whispered to his companion and left the House for a dressing room. "Time to talk to your maker."


End file.
